A lease sign taped to the door is the only announcement Kitsilano locals got.
Simpatico Ristorante, the Greek restaurant that has sat at 2222 West 4th since 1969, has recently closed after 57 years.
We spotted the sign on a walk down the block, and Google now lists the restaurant as permanently closed.
There was no farewell post on the restaurant’s Facebook page, which has been inactive since 2024.
Its Instagram is gone, and its website is not working either.
The most recent Google reviews point to a quiet shutdown sometime in July.
Fifty-seven years is a long time to leave without saying anything.
Simpatico landed on West 4th the year Vancouver was still figuring out what a pizza restaurant even was, and it went on to build its whole reputation on one.
The whole wheat crust was the signature, and in the 1980s and early 1990s several magazines named the pizza here the best in Canada.
That is not a claim many restaurants in this city can make.
The menu ran Greek and Italian at the same time, with mainland Greek, Cypriot, Anatolian and Italian dishes sharing one page.
Avgolemono, orzo in chicken stock with lemon and egg. Artichoke hearts with pita. Tarama dip, sweet basil spareribs, baked BC salmon, and a fish pizza built on anchovies, oysters and shrimp.
According to this restaurant profile, the kitchen stayed in one family for most of the run.
The current owner’s father took over in 1981, and after he died around 2006 his son Marino Anagnostopoulos ran the place.
The head chef, Yani, came from Cyprus and had been working the line since the 1970s, per that same profile.
In it, the restaurant estimated that roughly 70 per cent of its room on any given night was regulars.
Local people, in other words, doing the same Tuesday they had been doing for decades.
That is the part that is actually gone.
West 4th has been trading its long-tenured rooms for newer ones for years now.
The block has been quietly reshaping itself for a while, and this is the loudest thing to happen on it in a long time.
Simpatico joins other recent Vancouver closures including Osetra, Odd Burger, and Trocadero.
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Address: 2222 West 4th Avenue, Vancouver BC