Ottawa Foodies

I've been there several times since they changed their chef in Feb. The food is great! Consistent and favourful. Certainly one of the best Italian places in Ottawa.

We went for a pre-Valentine's day dinner tonight and enjoyed the experience quite a bit. The service was at a leisurely pace. (I didn't feel like the waiter was hovering, ready to pounce the instant our dishes were empty, but he was prompt.) We enjoyed appetizers, entrees and dessert over about two hours.

Service was excellent, except they didn't warn me that the "fresh basil" the menu promised would be on my pizza was going to be replaced with dried basil. Food was not so good (see food-specific reviews). Everything was super fast -- we booked for 8pm and were out of there an hour later, after appetizers and main dishes. We didn't want to risk dessert and ended up having an amazing one elsewhere (vendor 1047).

One thing I do like about Italian restaurants is that they usually serve up a really good Cinzano Rosso with lemon and ice. It was great here but disappeared too quickly. ;-)

The Puttanesca Piccolino was quite spicy and very flavourful. BF says he would order it again.

The Affumicata pasta (linguini, smoked salmon, asparagus, tomato, dill, and cream) came with a very generous amount of smoked salmon. The asparagus pieces were nice and tender. Unfortunately, if we happened to take a mouthful without salmon we found that the sauce had no depth of flavour.

The linguini were cooked perfectly -- too bad the sauce was kind of boring.

I asked for a specially made pizza since the pasta all has egg in it (which I don't eat). They presented me with a yummy veg pizza with a tomato sauce base. It was covered with a moderate amount of veggies including artichoke hearts, asparagus, zucchini, peppers, broccoli and tomato. If anything, it was a little under-salted, but then, I love salt. The garlic with tasty and not overpowering. The thin crust was flaky on the inside and crispy on the outside. I read in the menu that the crust is 100% organic.

I ordered the Quattro Formaggi pizza (mozzarella, bocconcini, fontina, parmesan, fresh basil, tomato sauce). When it arrived, I was surprised to find dried basil and no fresh. I didn't remember if the menu had promised fresh basil so I didn't complain. (I picked up a take-out menu on the way out and found out later that indeed it *did* promise fresh basil.) Maybe there was an honest mistake made, or did they just think, "Oh, this guy won't know the difference." Customers don't like to be treated like idiots!

I quite liked the taste of the pizza, although I could see that the cheese topping might be too heavy for the crust. Thin crust pizza is great, but this was 5 millimetres of cheese and sauce on a 2 millimetre crust (about the thickness of a tortilla wrapper).

A couple next to us shared a pizza as an appetizer, then had a pasta dish each. Smart move -- maybe they'd tried the caesar salad on a previous visit! :-)

BF had the Amaretto-Vanilla tartufo which had a nice flavour and balanced out the firey Puttanesca Piccolino he had as his main course.

Good but not exciting is how my bf described the calamari. Half of it was properly cooked and the other half was overcooked.

Wifey dramatically declared this to be the worst caesar salad she had ever had. I think I've had worse, but only at fast food places and mall food courts. The server told us, "it's really good" when we ordered it and we were starving when it arrived so we should have been easy to please.

The romaine was on the tough side (sure, it's the middle of winter but many grocery stores sell better lettuce than this). The dressing was more "sharp garlic" than "tasty garlic" and was just kind of boring. I think Kraft's bottled stuff has more pizazz. And, for goodness sake, never ever serve a caesar salad on a *warm* plate!! If it's still hot from the dishwasher rinse it with cold water before putting lettuce on it. :P

The redeeming part was the tasty little herbed crostini in lieu of croutons.