Giovanni's Restaurant

Giovanni's cooks veal six ways. Vitello al Marsala, Vitello Parmigiana, Vitello Chef, Involtini di Vitello, Vitello alla Genovese, and Osso Buco Piemontese each hold their own line on the menu, and that kind of depth on a single ingredient tells you what sort of Italian kitchen sits on Preston Street. This is the upscale corner of Ottawa's Little Italy — a dining room built for the meal you plan in advance rather than the one you stumble into. The menu runs wide enough that a table can work through antipasti, pasta, seafood, and veal across a single evening, and it rewards the diners who come ready to do exactly that.

The pasta makes the case for richness over novelty. Lobster Ravioli is the clearest luxury anchor — homemade pasta filled with Canadian lobster and mascarpone cream, finished with a tomato coulis — while Linguine Pescatore loads one plate with scallops, shrimp, mussels, clams, and Alaskan king crab in white wine. Risotto alla Pescatora carries that same seafood leaning through the rice course, and Lasagna alla Bolognese and Gnocchi della Casa hold down the comfort end, with Pennoni and the other house pastas filling in around them. None of these are small plates. They are built to anchor a full dinner, which is how the menu expects to be read.