Giovanni’s Ristorante and Lounge Qualicum Beach

It you are planning on dining out in Parksville-Qualicum during a pandemic with its accompanying labour shortage, plan early.  We had a couple of failed attempts at Lefty’s in both Parksville and Qualicum Beach. 

In Qualicum Beach we found Giovanni’s Ristorante and Lounge and lucked out with a table for our party of six.  They were working hard in hot temperatures and the demand of being one of the few sit-down restaurants open that hot Thursday nights.  At lot of these places close at 7 PM.  For example, in Coombs, we dined at Cuckoo’s and managed to arrive for 4:30 PM and had a leisurely early dinner.

At Giovanni’s I had a good spaghetti and meat balls.  They had decent vegetarian options.  What I did notice was that they did a lot of pizza take out.  So much so that when we were leaving, they had to cut off service because they were out of dough!

I’m hoping everyone during this pandemic is being grateful to travel at all and beyond gracious to the staff working in hospitality.  A lot of regular workers had to transition to other work because the ability to work was being dictated by government response to a microorganism.