| rev:text
| - We've been eagerly anticipating the opening of PastaBAR since we heard of it, and we love the location near Sens, Breadfruit and now Turf Accountant.
Let's start out by saying we are huge fans of hand made fresh pasta. But read on...
We showed up about 7pm on a Thursday and were the only patrons in the place...another group showed up when we were finishing.
The decor is nice, I like it. The servers were very friendly and attentive. The bar / wine list was not yet available, but we went in expecting this as we knew about the license pending.
Let's talk about the food and presentation.
Starters:
There were plastic packaged crunchy breadsticks on our plates - ok, tasty enough. It would be nicer if the kitchen sent out something small and hand made instead.
We tried the Fritto Misto, a deep fried appetizer trio: stuffed/deep fried olives: tasty and interesting, not a bad start. The broccollini was not as good, a bit greasy, but still interesting. The deep fried risotto was probably the best thing they have, I really enjoyed it. All were served on a plain white plate.
Pastas:
We were told the portions were small, 4-6oz, so we decided to order and share 3 pastas and get a few tastes for the evening. All were served in plain white bowls (which is fine), but as a whole they all just had too many flavors that overwhelmed the pasta, especially any with the hot peppers. The gianciale was interesting as a bacon in the pasta, but all around, the pastas tasted heavy, possibly over-egged, too garlicky, and one even had bread mixed in with the sauce...very odd.
The gnocchi was way too spicy, the gnocchi itself was actually nicely made, but the sauce completely blanketed any flavors the pasta might have had. You wouldn't know it was gnocchi other than the texture and shape. Aren't you here for the sauce AND the pasta? Why take so much time to lovingly hand prepare a pasta if you are going to kill it with a poorly made sauce?
We did not finish but a portion of each bowl, it wasn't interesting or good enough. We eat Italian several times a week and even though in most cases our favorite Italian restaurant (Marcellino Ristorante) costs more, the quality, flavors, presentation and service are far better than the food and service here. A $19 Pacatelli al Ragu di Salsiccia at Marcellino completely blows away a $17 anything here. There is no comparison.
This place hasn't mastered pasta yet, unfortunately....and this is the chef from Sassi I believe...maybe we were there on a bad night? But three strikeouts in three pastas...just doesn't cut it. It wasn't good enough, it was way too overwrought.
Desert:
Skipped, they only offered italian ice.
I think the chef is trying to be too creative here. Either that or I am used to more subtelty, higher quality, or even more mastery in the making of pastas and the pairing of hand made sauces.
Both of us agreed that we probably wouldn't come back, even though we always like to give a restaurant more than one chance. It just didn't show any kind of mastery of Italian food at all. Just too many conflicting flavors that did nothing for the pasta.
On the way out we stopped at Sens and were nicely received by Johnny Chu and we had a nice bottle of Sake as our dessert. We were so impressed by their menu and cold Sake selection that we went back the next night and had some of the best asian fusion we've had! (Review pending). mmm, Yakitori shrimp with head on. Crunchy goodness!
Summary:
If you are in the neigborhood, you have better options for a nice dinner for a better price. Sens, Cheuvront, Breadfruit.. but if you want Italian food...this isn't the place.
But give them a try, my review is my own. My palate is different and I'm sure many people will love this place, it might be a match for you.
I do wish them success. This is a tough economy and maybe all that is needed is a few tweaks to the sauces - a little more subtlety and fewer ingredients that work well together might make this place worth revisiting.
|
![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)
![[cxml]](/fct/images/cxml_doc.png)
![[csv]](/fct/images/csv_doc.png)
![[text]](/fct/images/ntriples_doc.png)
![[turtle]](/fct/images/n3turtle_doc.png)
![[ld+json]](/fct/images/jsonld_doc.png)
![[rdf+json]](/fct/images/json_doc.png)
![[rdf+xml]](/fct/images/xml_doc.png)
![[atom+xml]](/fct/images/atom_doc.png)
![[html]](/fct/images/html_doc.png)