When Chef Riley Aitken quietly transitioned his wood-fired restaurant Smokey Bear into Bella two years ago, he didn’t just change the menu — he shifted the whole mood. Gone is the nose-to-tail seriousness and neon-lit masculine room with Muhammad Ali artwork. In its place: pink booths, yellow chairs, vintage Italian posters and a wine list heavy on natural Australian bottles.
The curious choice of wines makes sense once you learn about Aitken’s background. Aitken is not Italian — nor does he pretend to be. Rather the Canadian-born chef spent three years as the head of Australian dining destination Biota, where he sharpened his skills with open-fire cooking and farm-sourced ingredients, many of which he picked straight from the fields while living out of his car. The formative experience — as well as his upbringing in Indonesia and training in Denmark — brings an international restlessness to the kitchen that shows up across Bella’s “Italian-ish” offerings.
Annotated with cheeky quips and hand drawings, the menu sets the tone for a playful dining room that leans into Whyte Ave’s youthful atmosphere — and clearly resonates with women (I was one of two men in the room). The room was buzzing with the energy of 30-something women in pairs and small groups, sipping orange wine, splitting $20 pastas (Wednesday and Thursday nights) and passing around dishes that are casual enough for sharing but bold enough to linger on the tongue.
The arancini, for example, are falafel-like — compact, crisp and designed to be eaten with your hands, like calamari, dipping into Lebanese-style toum, a sharp garlic sauce. The resemblance to Middle Eastern food ends after biting into its gooey centre packed with mushroom, onion, mozzarella and Italian spices.
That same punchiness shows up in the ricotta and ’nduja, a Calabrian-style spreadable sausage whipped with grilled and fermented peppers. Best ordered together, the housemade ricotta mixes beautifully with the sausage, cooling its potent heat and aggressive smoke.
Not even the fennel salad could be considered lighter fare. Heavily dressed and tossed with caramelized chocolate crumble, oranges and salty pistachios, it’s the gutsiest salad I’ve ever tasted — and it works.
For a main, I had to try the ricotta gnocchi, which Aitken calls his “fluffy tomato clouds.” They were, as advertised, like pillowy dumplings but nicely contrasted with a lemony tomato sauce. The dish speaks to Bella’s high-quality ingredients — sweet tomatoes, creamy ricotta, fresh herbs, simply and confidently combined.
I ended with the panna cotta, topped with sweet, crunchy vanilla croutons — like Alpha-Bits cereal in a bowl of light custard instead of milk. It’s a small but telling example of how Aitken likes to subvert expectations — even a delicate dessert arrives with a wink, reminding diners that refinement and fun aren’t mutually exclusive.
Bella
Strathcona | 8223 104 Street NW, Edmonton | bellayeg.com
