Once upon a time my girlfriend was married to an Italian.

They moved from Toronto to a townhouse a mere thirty minutes from Rome. We went to visit and, between regrouping pit stops at their house, spent two months roaming around Italy. We travelled with them to spend a holiday-week with her husband’s relatives on Sardegna. We cycled for a week in Tuscany. We went up and down coastlines, hiked the Cinque Terre and lugged our backpacks on to trains, planes and automobiles.

We began that trip in Sienna, where we spent one week in a homestay and language school. This gave us just enough verbs and nouns to make an utter botchery of the language. However, it enabled us to get on the right train, book a room and order our dinner.

And order our dinner we did.

Every day we ate our weight in gelato, perfect tiny shots of espresso with crema that could make you weep, flaking warm pastries, pastas tossed with truffles, smoky-meat paninotecas, litres of wine, chewy ciabattas, thick decadent cups of hot chocolate and buckets of tree-green olive oil. We ate at sidewalk cafes, tiny restaurants, tucked away caffes, picnics while cycling through Tuscany, or dining with plates piled high on my girlfriend’s patio.

‘Twas a fine fine trip.

As a result of that trip (and a subsequent Italian visit) I feel quite qualified to declare when I’ve had a great Italian meal. And so.

Let me say this, “I have found a great Italian caffe!”

Sciue is located in our very own Yaletown neighbourhood. Their pizzas are thin and chewy and divinely annointed with torn leaves of basil, fresh goat cheese, pesto, pastrami or any other truly Italian ingredient you can imagine.

The lasagne is stacked layers of the exact-right toothiness of pasta melded with a sauce that could only be cooked by a woman with a large tomato-smeared apron; a mama with crinkled laugh lines at the corner of her kind eyes…seriously. It’s that kind of sauce.

You can taste the love.

And the espresso? Oh my. It is an angel crying on your tongue (albeit she’s a street-smart edgy kind of angel. One who would just as soon kick you hard if you didn’t listen, an angel, in other words, with some kick-ass attitude).

In short, I quite like this place called Sciue (Shoe-eh).

There is a rather ironic twist to all this. Now that we’ve listed our apartment we will very likely be moving out of this Yaletown neighbourhood and away from my new discovery.

But while writing this piece, I discovered some GREAT news. There are three other locations.

Whew!

I’m going to be okay.