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jeremyseow

Excellent lunch place with lots of different choices for pasta. Carbonara, Gnocchi and Lasagne are excellent. Not so sure about dinner because it is still mainly about pastas. It is good to have more meats and fish mains. Service is decent and the prices are very reasonable.

 

9 months ago

purextc

Good selection of pasta's and they even have a Non-Smoking section!

 

6 months, 2 weeks ago

smk_

Delicious homemade pasta.

 

5 months, 2 weeks ago

zimbu

Pasti v. Pasta Fresca Hong Mei

You two. Fight to the death!

Round 1, Decor:

Pasta Fresca comes out swinging with a bag full of faux tricks. The whole place is designed like some sort of faux Italian palace or whatever. Big chunky stone walls, stone floors, parabolic-shaped arch ceilings, two ton cast iron chairs, etc. First impressions are nice but after a while the massive fauxness begins to wear on your mind. The strangely shaped ceilings are nice to look at but have an amazing ability to channel sound from that big mouth Chinese-American lady sitting three tables away. While it is interesting to know that she has a back problem and thus needs to raise her desk a few inches...well, it's not that interesting. The sofa booths are also a problem. They look nice but as soon as you sit down, you realize the dimensions are way off. You end up sitting way too high over the table and struggle to find a comfortable position.

Pasti goes with a clean, medium woody, non-faux approach. It's second floor location requires a climb up an interesting wooden staircase. Paintings and photo prints on the wall give it a more modern and young feeling. Plenty of plants are scattered around also. The antipasti (dustipasti) salad table is positioned in maximum dust-catching location, but that can be ignored if you avoid ordering it.

Pasti just barely wins this round.

Round 2, Bread on table:

Pasta Fresca, slightly discouraged by the first round results, makes a rather weak effort with a small basket of sliced baguette with simple toppings. One appears to be a feeble attempt at garlic bread. The other has some cheese. There is some paprika sprinkled about the place. The impression is of bread slices for kindergarten kids.

Pasti, on the other hand, plonks down a plate of big fresh steaming bread chunks, served with oil/vinegar or olive mushanini. Fresh and chewy and fragrantly breadish. Good stuff!

Round 2 goes to Pasti again. Pasta Fresca had better wake up before this turns into a blowout.

Round 3, Salad:

Pasti's Ceasar salad comes in a big white urinaliscent bowl. The lettuce is sometimes fresh, sometimes not. The Ceasar dressing appears to be from that younger fake Ceasar (the one who tortured and killed Vorenus' brother-in-law with Pullo) rather than the real Ceasar who was stabbed repeatedly into a bloody mess in the Senate building. Too liquidy and not enough taste...the Ceasar dressing, not the bloody mess in the Senate.

Pasti's dustipasti salad, mentioned earlier, is also not a winner.

Pasta Fresca finally finds something they are good at: salads. A range of salads are available and all of them are excellent. The mixed platter is my favorite, but the tomato/cheese thing is also very good.

Pasta Fresca finally takes a good swing and wins Round 3.

Round 4, Soup:

Both contestants offer up the classic minestrone with nearly identical results. Pasta Fresca adds a nice tablespoon of pesto on the top, which catches Pasti off guard. Pasti responds with fresher, slightly crispy vegetables which give just the right "bite" and taste to their offering. Which is more important to minestrone: The little touch of pesto on the top or the taste/freshness of the vegetables?

Pasti takes round 4. Pasta Fresca develops a small cut over the right eye. Cut man, Chuck Bodak, goes to work to repair the damage.

Round 5, Pasta:

Here's where Pasti really begins to beat on Pasta Fresca. I have had 4 different pasta dishes at Pasti, and each has been nearly perfect. Perfect al dente-ness, perfect sauce, good size portion. Perfecto-ni-ma-de-misimo!

Pasta Fresca is a little more iffy. Sometimes it's ok, and sometimes not. Tortellini have been overcooked in the past. Creamy pesto sauce a little sticky and stanky. Seafood sauce is usually nice, but one some occasions, a few of the seafood pieces were not freshimisimo enough.

Pasta Fresca takes a standing 8 count. Pasti wins this round handily.

Round 6, Drinks:

Can only compare the coffee drinks from my experience. Pasti cappucino arrives hot with a nice authentic taste. Pasta Fresca, on the other hand, has given me a lukewarm cappucino at least 50% of the time I have ordered it there. What's the problem? I have no idea. Can't they steam the milk right or what?

Pasti gives Pasta Fresca another whoopin' in this round.

Round 7, Staff:

The Pasta Fresca ladies, perhaps upset by the result of previous rounds, look to be totally depressed. Sure, they hover appropriately and will get you what you want, but they barely crack a smile throughout the meal. Which is strange since you would think that one or two of them would be in a good mood once in a while. But no. Either they have been trained for blank-facedness, or they are hired based on their sour personalities.

Pasti ladies. on the other hand, are simple country girls, happy to be working somewhere other than a Shenzhen shoe factory run by angry, strip-searching Koreans. None of them (the girls, not the Koreans) seems to be more than five feet tall, which is not important to know, but curious nonetheless. When the shift manager (Italian?) young lady is working and whispering instructions in their ears, they do a very nice job. Just about everything is done correctly. Plus they are happy and friendly and smile when appropriate (and not strip searched by angry Koreans). The bad news is that they tend to get a little chatty when the shift manager is not around. Last time I was there they were all standing around the counter loudly commenting in Chinese that they hope business will be good today so that the boss can pay the suppliers and the suppliers will then not cause any problems yelling for payments....uh, not such a good advertisement.

Despite the Chatty-Kathy-ness of the Pasti ladies, I still give this round to them.

Ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner. The winner and new world champion is...Paaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaassssttttttiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii iiiiiiii!

 

5 months ago

an_inverted_love

I've been to Pasti twice: the first time, a few months back, and the second time, over the weekend. I've always been impressed by the food. The portions are decent, the pricing is decent, the flavor is great. The restaurant is cozy and, from my limited experience, the drinks aren't bad.

But the service! Ugh. All right, the first time I went, things were okay. I was with about a dozen people and we had no complaints even though they were a bit slow serving us. It was generally great. That's probably why I added it to my list of restaurants that I have to visit again.

The second visit was not-so-great, in terms of service. I was with my boyfriend, and he ordered a Havana Beach with the creamy salmon pasta. I ordered a Caribbean Kiss with the "lots of mushroom" pasta. The first strike, I could deal with: a second waitress had to come by because our first had no idea what the things we ordered were. Okay, so it's a new girl. That's fine...even if the waitresses serving us always seemed pissed off about something. The second strike came when waitress #2 gave me a Cuba Libre instead of a Caribbean Kiss... and then insisted that I ordered it even though the bill said Caribbean Kiss -- I don't think she could tell the difference between the two on a menu and only noticed that both started with a 'c'. So okay, her English was really bad. Strike 3 came when they served my boyfriend the creamy seafood pasta and insisted that it was actually the creamy salmon. Somebody in our party had the creamy salmon last time and it did not have clams, shrimp, or any other seafood. It didn't taste anything like what they gave us. The waitress basically told us, "Look, look at the orange. That's salmon. It's creamy salmon. I gave you the right order." She even wrote creamy seafood on accident, and just said that she typed it in incorrectly but that the order was still correct. Another waitress finally came over, pulled her aside, and told her that the pasta she gave us was, in fact, creamy seafood and therefore the wrong order. By then, we'd been waiting for about an hour, so we decided, "Ahh f--- it, we'll just take the creamy seafood" and to just chalk it up to experience.

The food was still good, but really, the service could improve by a lot. Or at least the waitress that served us could be a lot less stubborn and bad-tempered. Go to Pasti -- the food is great -- but double check your order, for your own good.

 

4 months, 2 weeks ago

sthengg

I went to Pasti 2 times in order to get a catering quotation without result. Sent 2 emails to their website: www.italiancatering.cn and got no reply. At the end I hired a private chef for my daughter´s birthday, but its just amazing how they even didn´t care... just my two cents.

4 months, 1 week ago

emta

Great pretty authentic Italian food - the gnocchi is fantastic everytime I go. Good wine list (not extensive). But I can agree that the service is usually lacking. We had to literally flag down a waitress each time we wanted anything which is a pain in the arse when you're trying to enjoy a nice dinner out.

 

4 months ago

fatcow

Don't really have an issue with the food here, which although not the best in town is still good.

Rather, service seems to slip anytime the owner/managers aren't around and lately it seems to be getting more pronounced.

There are better places for Italian out there both in terms of food and service.

 

3 months, 1 week ago

fatcow

FYI - There is new management at Pasti...this may explain the sudden lapse in quality and service.

3 months, 1 week ago

pekkleduckie

i went today for lunch after reading some of the reviews here.

their pasta was excellent!! (i had a fusilli pasta with anchovies, cherry tomato in tomato sauce. now that i think of it, it was supposed to have capers as well but they did not add it?!) i have to say i was not so impressed with their pan bread. if they had warmed it up a little, it would have been so much better. as well, i had to ask for my olive oil and vinegar.

service was alright. waitresses spoke enough english but they werent overly eager to be working there.

the food was good enough that i would venture there again.

 

3 months ago

dallas

If you are looking for a place to have pizza or pasta then this is the place. Nice atmosphere and friendly service. Adequate wine list. Definitely will add Pasti to my list of favorites.

 

2 months, 2 weeks ago