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SnackHappy
Mar 3, 2013 09:37 AM
After trying to hit up Maïs and finding a line-up much longer than one you'd see at Kazu, our party of two decided to go up the street and give Pastaga a try. We showed up around 8pm and got seated right away.
Overall I really enjoyed our dinner. Food was well thought-out and executed, seasoning was perfect and presentation was very nice. Service was very good. We ordered four dishes and shared a dessert and a bottle of wine. It was plenty of food. I don't think I could have managed three dishes per person, and I'm a big eater. We had marinated char with fingerling potatoes, Mackerel sous-vide with beats, endive and blue cheese salad, a pork belly dish and churros. Everything was great, but the marinated char and endive salad lacked a bit of punch. The fish could have used a bit of acidity somewhere and the blue cheese in the salad didn't taste like much. The mackerel and pork belly were much better balanced, although I would have preferred if the mackerel had been served warm. Churros were very good. Not as crispy as what you would get at a good Spanish churreria, but not bad either, The passion fruit caramel sauce was the highlight of that dish, and I don't even like passion fruit that much.
The wine? It was an organic chardonnay. I didn't find it very chardonnay-like, but it was enjoyable. Of course, you have to like organic wines and "vins nature".
The bill came out to $130 before tip. I find that expensive. Especially if you compare it to the very comparable Le Comptoir.
So, I have no regrets, but I won't be going back any time soon, either. I can get the same kind of food and level of cooking elsewhere at a better price.
And maybe in a year, when the foodie sheeple have moved on, I'll go try Maïs.
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Good food, but the portion sizes are ridiculously small
problem with the wine...not good at all
service and ambiance bad›2 Replies-
re: mtlgoodfood
Portions are small, yes, but it is advertised as is; small plates, tapas-ish , 2, 3 plates per person. Looking at the prices, 12$-15$ would be an indication.
All wines (1 visit) that I had were very good. maybe you simply just did not like them (it happens, as they serve mostly/only "natural" wines from small producers ), were they defective? if so, it would have been replaced.
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Finally tried it. I can't argue that the food was very good, we only had positive comments about everything we tried (piglet, guinea fowl, bison smoked meat, beets risoto, salmon, The bread is also worth the 1$/person charge, excellent. We were only disapointed that, except for oysters, there is nothing on the menu to snack on/share with the apero. The wine list is the only aspect we were disapointed in. They have some interesting choices, the few I knew, but the waiter had trouble giving suggestions. It seems what he suggested was always exactly what I told him we did not want. The sommelier did a little better, but we were not left impressed by that aspect of the meal. When you have local producers that most people don't know (which is great, I love that), you have to be able to suggest and explain the wine to yur customers. My 2cents.
Oh, and back to maximilien's comment about the name, on Foursquare, the restaurant is listed as an Italian restaurant that serves pasta. So it is confusing.
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re: sweettoothMTL
SnackHappy
Jan 17, 2012 09:04 AM
Word on the street is that they opened when they weren't yet ready and are having to adjust things a bit. I would give them a bit of time and wait for the media reviews.
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kpzoo
Dec 13, 2011 08:12 AM
FYI, they have a Facebook page where they've posted at least one menu du jour:
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I think the name is just wrong.
Everyone will think it's a pasta restaurants and it's not; and everywhere I've read about the new restaurant they had to explain that it's not a pasta restaurant and that the name is really a play on the "pastis" word.
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re: EaterBob
SnackHappy
Dec 13, 2011 08:10 AM
I think Max has a point. Opening a restaurant a few steps from Little Italy and calling it Pastaga is setting yourself up for a lot of confusion. And to expect anyone in this town to be familiar with this bit of Southeastern French slang is not very reasonable.
That being said, the place has enough foodie buzz going for it that, if it's any good, it will most certainly find its clientele.
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re: SnackHappy
If either of you can figure out a way to quantify the confusion, I'd be more than happy to make a small wager. In the meantime, I'm likely to wait until the new year before trying it so as to give them ample opportunity to work out the kinks.
Given M. Juneau's track record I'm expecting that it will be very good.
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re: Glaff
lol. "Everyone", eh? I'd never heard it on anyone's lips and I live just off Parc just below the park. Foodies live in their own little world.
Besides that, En Route is a freaking airline magazine, not the Globe and Mail, Maclean's or whatever - hmmm, come to think of it, I guess it passes for national media as much as anything in Canada, LMAO. Nonetheless, significantly more people check in with Foursquare, particularly if they aren't from this quaint little place where the in-flight reading is somehow one of our supposed major media players.
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