Gigi’s Pizza & Spaghetti House Company

Ordered take out again; not much different than last time. Ravioli this time, again with meat balls. Prompt delivery and good garlic bread. Huge portion. I’ll have to actually go to the restaurant sometime.

the food is hit or miss … i no longer order from this restaurant … i started ordering from here because they take interac at my door but that is not a good enough reason for me to continue ordering … as i said, the food can be hit or miss … i could order the same thing on the menu four separate times and receive four different orders … i do not care for their tossed salad and asked to have caesar instead and sometimes there was no charge but more often than not the charge was 2 dollars when the difference in price on the menu is $ 1.25 … when i asked, the person on the phone agreed the price difference was $ 1.25 but the charge was $ 2.00 … necessitating me to cancel my order and never use this restaurant again … if it was good food, maybe, but with mediocore food, questionable customer service, this is a restaurant that will receive no more of my money …

Eh.
One extra star for a live jazz band.

I am giving Gigi’s a very enthusiastic 3 stars. These stars come with an advisory though: Go with a fun friend or two, and don’t forget your sense of humor.
Unintentionally kitschy, Gigi’s looks like a renovated small town truck stop with the atmosphere of a low end hotel bar. Before you stop reading altogether, dinner for two light eaters plus ½ litre of almost decent wine amounted to $ 40! This makes the alarming light fixtures and average age of the patrons (65+) absolutely insignificant and almost charming.
We shared a vegetarian pizza and a caesar salad. The pizza was just fine. Gourmet, no — just a good solid veggie pizza. The kind that gets better after every slice you eat. Same for salad. The live music was pleasant, and entertaining enough, though my musically-​inclined lover mentioned the piano was out of tune. Service is good, fast and matter-​of-​fact, just the way I like it. And if you sit in the window you will have unparalleled drag-​queen watching opportunities on Davie Street.
This is the kind of place you’ll want to take your mom. Mine would have thought Gigi’s was heaven on Davie Street, and would have ordered another $ 5.75 glass of wine.

The service was ok and the onion soup au gratin was pretty good, but the pasta (I can’t remember exactly what kind it was) was pretty blah, and the garlic bread was bland. The prices were pretty average, but the food is iffy. If the food improves, I’ll probably go back, but it’s just not worth it as it stands. (I did miss the live Jazz music, though, so maybe my experience wasn’t really complete!)

Disappointing quality… no, a ripoff. Being desperate for delivery on a Sunday night I called these guys and ordered the chicken and ribs meal ($ 20+ including tax: which included salad, baked potato and slice of garlic bread). I get a quarter chicken (ok), but only about 4 ribs that were the size of my thumb. The baked potato was plain, the garlic bread was a slice of regular white bread with garlic butter, and the salad was iceberg lettuce (iceberg lettuce?!).
Put some effort into it if you’re going to charge that much. I wasn’t expecting Swiss Chalet (although that would have been sooo much better… and they charge about the same price BTW), but come on!

Way too expensive for what it is. The saganaki was too salty and didn’t come with enough bread, so you either had to eat extremely salty cheese in hot oil by itself or not let a dish that was fairly expensive go to waste. I ordered the fettucine with dill cream sauce and smoked salmon. I’ve had frozen dinners that have tasted better. There was no flavor in the sauce, there wasn’t enough sauce, and the smoked salmon didn’t taste like smoked salmon. I’d say it tasted more like canned tuna. And not the better quality brands. Another person ordered the Mediterranean pizza that was supposed to come with chicken, but didn’t. The last dish that our party tried was the grilled/​pan-​seared salmon with rice and vegetables. That was okay, but again, no real flavor. The fish didn’t taste very fresh and the seasoning was lacking.
The pricing and décor of this restaurant tricked us. Even though it may look like a nice sit-​down restaurant, beware! The food does not mirror the ambiance.

The saganaki was waay too salty, and the bread it came with wasn’t very good. The pasta with smoked salmon was pretty flavorless, the salmon with rice pilaf was okay but the salmon was overcooked. The only thing that was near deserving of its price was the Mediterranean chicken pizza, and even that had no chicken on it. Overall pretty disappointing food, but we were really hungry so we finished it all.
The service was friendly and prompt.

OK. we owe the owner of Darryl’s Coffee Shop.
down the street for sending us here. Hey Darryl. we owe you one.
Gigi’s actually offers *more* than Pizza & Spaghetti. It’s got full entrees, salmon, steak, lamb, and chicken dishes at reasonable prices. friendly service. drinks… and on Friday and Saturday nights. live jazz keyboard and drumming. of the standards. for those of you who happen to like the standards. which *we* do.
So for us this place was perfect. a nice friendly not-​too-​expensive piano bar. in a nice not-​too-​expensive part of town. (which is where we happened to be staying). There seemed to be lots hot night-​club spots for you *young* people. and lots of LGBT-​friendly bars in this area. But Gigi’s with a good mix of older and younger customers. gave us older folks who don’t like to *think* of ourselves as older folk. a place to see and be seen…
The Food.
I notice that an earlier reviewer was disappointed with her order of Chicken Parmesan. and I am very sorry she experienced the trouble that she did.
However, not being all that discriminating an eater myself. I can only say the Lamb Soulvaki served me and the grilled salmon that was served Susan was fine for us. Because I have just been diagnosed with Celiac disease (wheat gluten intolerance) I talked with Patricia, the proprietor, about making sure whatever I ordered did not include wheat flour or any other wheat product. She was very willing to alter any recipes necessary to accomodate my special needs so big points for that…
Da ‘Music!
Patricia’s husband. Big Dee is retired geek. is a self-​proclaimed musical illiterate … but has found a way to sort of set up an electronic keyboard on top of his piano and depend on automated base chords. to make up for his left hand lack of dexterity. and then manages to dash off a modest repertoire of jazz standard melodies with some really cool jazz rift embellishments with his right hand. together with his percussionist friend, Mitch,. they go at it back and forth on Friday and Saturday nights. Good enough for *my* ear. I am musically illiterate myself. but I listen to a lot of this stuff all the time. *I* was entertained. so seemed to be everyone else. For just going forward and showing what he had and not letting his lack of education stop him from staging some really nice stuff… so Big points for that!
Girl watching.
Try to get a window seat. Then watch at eye-​level the incredibly abundant, incredibly good-​looking young people traffic striding up and down Davie Street. Vancouver is an incredible city for gorgeous people watching. And a window seat here is as good a spot as any to do it from.
Indulging the customer…
Finally… if the time and the atmospherics seem right for it (as they apparently were last Friday)… they’ll *sometimes* let the one odd insistent customer who is making extravagant claims about being Sinatra’s unacknowledged Hawaiian luv child with the gorgeous voice and swinging cadence to prove it… Well. gosh durn it. they actually let me. UP TO THE MIC… Woo hooo… Weide, the singing attention whore finally got in some nice *fulfilling* attention whoring time on the evening before he flew out of Vancouver.
Big Dee. the piano player was quick to point out that he did not know enough about key changes to accommodate singers who sang the songs he knew in a different key from which he already played. but never mind. we just figgered out the songs where his playing and my singing were in sync and did those. Hey. it’s kind of a brave thing to let up strangers who wanna sing up at the mic during the dining hour. I appreciate that they did that for me… Big points for that!

We visited Vancouver this past weekend and stayed in a hotel not far from the many restaurants on Davie. We ate in this area two nights in a row and, on the third night, decided to try Gigi’s which we had spotted two nights before. I was in the mood for Italian. It was convenient to our hotel. It seemed like a deal.
It was not.
We were seated promptly and handed menus, but several minutes passed before the waiter came back to take even our drink order. When he did, we ordered both our drinks and our meals. Drinks were served reasonably promptly. But, we waited over 30 minutes for our meals.
It was not just us. There were five or six other tables where people were waiting for their meals. None of these tables had more than two people sitting at it, so it is not like the kitchen had to deal with any huge parties. Still, they seemed to only be able to handle one table at a time. One man who was by himself finally asked to have his meal packed up to go as he could not wait any longer.
I think our waiter overheard me make a comment to my husband about being hungry because he made a comment to me along the lines of he knew our food would be out soon because he «could smell it cooking.»
Still, I thought, maybe this is not all bad. Maybe if they really do take the time to hand make every meal, the food is going to be great.
I was wrong.
Our meals finally arrived. I had ordered Chicken Parmesan. My first bite was a combination of sauce and cheese that was actually quite tasty. It seemed promising. However, then I took a bite of the actual meat. I wish I could find a more descriptive account than «it just did not taste right,» but that pretty much sums it up. It just did not taste right. I took a second bite. Same thing. I started to wonder if, perhaps, they had brought me veal instead of chicken.
[We interrupt this Unilocaling for a short disclaimer: I am not a huge meat eater of any sort. However, veal is the only food I have ever stopped eating for political reasons. It has probably been 30 years since I ate it last, so, if it were fed to me, I would not instantly recognize the taste. We now return to our review.]
My husband tasted my «chicken,» and agreed something about it was off. We beckoned the waiter. I told him the chicken did not taste right to me and questioned if perhaps it was actually veal. My husband’s dish also contained chicken which he said tasted just fine. He pointed this out to the waiter who rather condescendingly replied that the chicken in my husband’s dish was merely sauteed, while mine was breaded and served in a sauce, so, of course they were going to taste differently.
Still, he brought my food back to the kitchen. He returned a minute later and announced the cook had cut into it, inspected it, and confirmed it was, in fact, chicken. He plopped the same plate o’ food, that had now been dissected and examined behind closed doors, back in front of me. Perhaps, I said, but that does not change the fact that it does not taste right. Just then, another table beckoned him. He went to see to that table and said he would be right back.
He lied.
My husband continued to eat his fettuccine, which he reported to be «serviceable.» My Mystery Meat Parmesan sat there untouched. I took small tastes of the accompanying (too salty) potatoes, (too greasy) veggies and (chemical-​tasting) garlic bread. But, I now had no appetite for any of it.
The waiter, meanwhile, danced around us – clearing and setting other tables, but never making eye contact with us. Finally he came over and asked if he should clear our plates — completely ignoring the fact that mine had barely been touched. My husband reminded him that I had not eaten my dinner because it was inedible.
The waiter whisked our plates off to the kitchen. A couple of minutes later the owner (and chef?) appeared to ask what was wrong with the meal. I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt that she honestly wanted to know this so she could make things better in the future. Still, I felt like I was being accused of having done something wrong and the whole encounter was uncomfortable.
She did take my meal off the check with no hassles. We did not leave a tip, though, primarily because of the way the waiter completely dissed us because he did not want to deal with my complaint.
Clearly, this is not a restaurant we’ll be returning to on any future trips up north.