Foods from Poco Pazzo
Comments
2010 Sep 10
We have been to this restaurant several times since it has opened and we keep returning for the great food and fantastic service.
On our last visit, I had the soup special - minestrone with chicken - delicious and my husband had the calamari. It is always light, crispy and delicious.
For main I had the canneloni - three tubes of fresh pasta rolled with a meat filling, covered in a tomato rose sauce with a little cheese. Not too big, but very tasty. I love their lasagna as well, however, it is MASSIVE and I usually end up bringing half of it home. Hubbie had the spaghetti and meat balls - bowl of fresh pasta with a little meat sauce and two huge, tasty, well-seasoned meat balls.
One of the main reasons I love this place - besides all the wonderful food, is that their whole menu is available as take-out.
Well done guys - a lovely addition to the west end! :-)
On our last visit, I had the soup special - minestrone with chicken - delicious and my husband had the calamari. It is always light, crispy and delicious.
For main I had the canneloni - three tubes of fresh pasta rolled with a meat filling, covered in a tomato rose sauce with a little cheese. Not too big, but very tasty. I love their lasagna as well, however, it is MASSIVE and I usually end up bringing half of it home. Hubbie had the spaghetti and meat balls - bowl of fresh pasta with a little meat sauce and two huge, tasty, well-seasoned meat balls.
One of the main reasons I love this place - besides all the wonderful food, is that their whole menu is available as take-out.
Well done guys - a lovely addition to the west end! :-)
2010 Aug 10
Came here for lunch with my wife today. Only three tables were occupied on a Tuesday, which is not too surprising given the location and heavy road construction nearby.
We found it to be pretty good, with tasty (albeit quite sweet) tomato sauce and decent food. The prices are not low -- the lunch special we opted for cost about $16 and included:
* a soft drink (we had water)
* a generous light caesar-style salad, served on the same plate as the rest of the meal
* chicken parmigiana: two thin cutlets, with good flavour
* meat-filled cannelloni: one small one, filled with meat that had a very "blah" flavour (wifey substituted a plain linguine for this -- good idea!)
We then shared an excellent Tiramisu for dessert. I'll write more under the appropriate food entry.
The food was certainly better than most we've had on Preston Street, so if you tend to enjoy Ottawa's Italian food this place is worth trying!
We found it to be pretty good, with tasty (albeit quite sweet) tomato sauce and decent food. The prices are not low -- the lunch special we opted for cost about $16 and included:
* a soft drink (we had water)
* a generous light caesar-style salad, served on the same plate as the rest of the meal
* chicken parmigiana: two thin cutlets, with good flavour
* meat-filled cannelloni: one small one, filled with meat that had a very "blah" flavour (wifey substituted a plain linguine for this -- good idea!)
We then shared an excellent Tiramisu for dessert. I'll write more under the appropriate food entry.
The food was certainly better than most we've had on Preston Street, so if you tend to enjoy Ottawa's Italian food this place is worth trying!
2010 Feb 21
Have had some catered items from this place - they donated it to a fundraiser we attended! They also offer a 'cooking class' with the chef and our friend took his new found recipe and made us dinner (eggplant and veal - OMG it was incredible!!). This place also put together a fun Cookbook as a fundraiser for Autism and we bought 2 copies. It is nice to see a local business put so much back into the community. Well done.
2009 Sep 2
Food is Hot - thanks for that info. Yes, the date should have been absolutely clear and in the interest of good customer service they should have honoured it anyway given that I had received it in the mail that weekend rather than standing there in the middle of the dining room arguing with me about it. Not cool in my books. At my family's restaurant we would have taken the $10 hit or whatever by honouring the coupon instead of p!ssing off a customer and losing their future business.
2009 Jun 27
This should be in the forums, but in any case ... FiH, what do you consider "international based"? I'm guessing US. In which case they always use M/D/Y. The international standard is YYYY/MM/DD, which incidentally makes most sense for computer geeks too since it automatically sorts properly.
What amazes me about dates is that after Y2K there are still so many people and organisations which do not use a 4 digit year.
What amazes me about dates is that after Y2K there are still so many people and organisations which do not use a 4 digit year.
2009 Jun 27
LOL, the "Date Debate".... here is some of the options based on our history (and why confusion continues to rule).
Month / Day / Year = 5/12/2009 = American
Day / Month / Year = 12/5/2009 = Canadian
Year-Month-Day = 2009-5-12 = Metric (largest to smallest)
Since Metric was introduced in Canada we are "supposed" to be using the latter, but of course very few people / places do, relying on what has been regarded as a standard format for soooo long. Unfortunately, it leaves the consumer confused because no one knows if the writer has based the date on the Canadian method or the American.
Of course the most practical is to just write it out as May 12, 2009 (although, in Canadian society that isn't bilingual... and that is a whole other debate).
Month / Day / Year = 5/12/2009 = American
Day / Month / Year = 12/5/2009 = Canadian
Year-Month-Day = 2009-5-12 = Metric (largest to smallest)
Since Metric was introduced in Canada we are "supposed" to be using the latter, but of course very few people / places do, relying on what has been regarded as a standard format for soooo long. Unfortunately, it leaves the consumer confused because no one knows if the writer has based the date on the Canadian method or the American.
Of course the most practical is to just write it out as May 12, 2009 (although, in Canadian society that isn't bilingual... and that is a whole other debate).
2009 Jun 26
For the record, in my international-based office that I worked at for 9 years, all dates were always listed as month/day/year, which I assume is standard. It certainly is confusing though; if I were designing a coupon I would personally try for less possibility of miscommunication and spell out the month rather than using the number system :)
2009 Jun 23
My husband and I went here to celebrate a special occasion and we were very disappointed. Before I explain my disappointment, let me say that our food was very tasty. He had the Pollo Principessa (as previously described by another poster) and I have the Veal Saltimbocca (Veal with sage and prosciutto.) I do think that the vegetables were possibly frozen, but they were covered in a yummy garlicky seasoning that they tasted good anyway.
We saw a 15% off coupon in the ValPak coupon envelope we got in the mail on Friday valid on Tuesdays only. We thought we'd give it a try. We made a reservation for 6:30pm on the following Tuesday. We arrive, husband gives his name, sees his name on the hostess' list, points it out, and she says "Oh, let me go check if you can have the empty table." You think? We have a reservation!
Ambience: This place needs to fix its lighting. It was still bright outside and when we were sat at a table in the centre of the room with no light source (no candle or overhead lighting) I could literally not see my husband's face because I was facing the window and the backlighting was so bad. Didn't make for very pleasant conversation when I couldn't even see his face when he was sitting 3 feet from me. Also, the poor lighting made it very difficult to see our food. The music was very quiet, drowned out by all the talking in the place, ok.
Our water glasses were pre-filled when we got to the table, no ice, lukewarm. Not refilled once throughout the night, and given that we were not drinking anything else I was kind of miffed. We did not order wine, as I cannot drink right now. We were brought bread. No offer of a refill on that either. Our meals came within 15 minutes and were very tasty, as I previously mentioned. My knife was dirty so I had to ask for a clean one.
I ordered a Tiramisu but took it to go as I was not feeling 100% and just wanted to go home. We handed the server the coupon. She says "Oh, this expired in May?" Last time I checked the date 5/12/2009 means December 5, 2009, but okay, whatever then.
A man, who I assume is the "owner and head chef Emanuele (according to the menu)" given his chef attire and his european accent, then came over and asked where we got the coupon and it should never have been sent to us because they were supposed to stop going out in March, ValPak should give us our money back, nothing I can do but apologize. The computer won't recognize the coupon now. Really? I call bull. You are the owner, you could choose to honour the coupon anyway given that it was JUST sent to us, and you have the date written ambiguously in the spirit of good customer service and trying to win over new clientele. Whatever...we paid the bill and left.
So, it's a good thing the food was good, because that's about all that was good about Poco Pazzo. If I lived nearby, I may go back for take-out, but given that it's a bit out of the way, I likely won't return.
We saw a 15% off coupon in the ValPak coupon envelope we got in the mail on Friday valid on Tuesdays only. We thought we'd give it a try. We made a reservation for 6:30pm on the following Tuesday. We arrive, husband gives his name, sees his name on the hostess' list, points it out, and she says "Oh, let me go check if you can have the empty table." You think? We have a reservation!
Ambience: This place needs to fix its lighting. It was still bright outside and when we were sat at a table in the centre of the room with no light source (no candle or overhead lighting) I could literally not see my husband's face because I was facing the window and the backlighting was so bad. Didn't make for very pleasant conversation when I couldn't even see his face when he was sitting 3 feet from me. Also, the poor lighting made it very difficult to see our food. The music was very quiet, drowned out by all the talking in the place, ok.
Our water glasses were pre-filled when we got to the table, no ice, lukewarm. Not refilled once throughout the night, and given that we were not drinking anything else I was kind of miffed. We did not order wine, as I cannot drink right now. We were brought bread. No offer of a refill on that either. Our meals came within 15 minutes and were very tasty, as I previously mentioned. My knife was dirty so I had to ask for a clean one.
I ordered a Tiramisu but took it to go as I was not feeling 100% and just wanted to go home. We handed the server the coupon. She says "Oh, this expired in May?" Last time I checked the date 5/12/2009 means December 5, 2009, but okay, whatever then.
A man, who I assume is the "owner and head chef Emanuele (according to the menu)" given his chef attire and his european accent, then came over and asked where we got the coupon and it should never have been sent to us because they were supposed to stop going out in March, ValPak should give us our money back, nothing I can do but apologize. The computer won't recognize the coupon now. Really? I call bull. You are the owner, you could choose to honour the coupon anyway given that it was JUST sent to us, and you have the date written ambiguously in the spirit of good customer service and trying to win over new clientele. Whatever...we paid the bill and left.
So, it's a good thing the food was good, because that's about all that was good about Poco Pazzo. If I lived nearby, I may go back for take-out, but given that it's a bit out of the way, I likely won't return.
Older
2013 Oct 11
Returned for lunch today, three years after my last visit. The tiramisu has totally changed! It is now served in a cocktail glass with a strangely long handled spoon. It wasn't bad, but nothing like the perfectly balanced rendition I enjoyed previously.
The rest of the meal was unremarkable. Except for the latte, which was remarkably watery and sad.
The rest of the meal was unremarkable. Except for the latte, which was remarkably watery and sad.
2010 Aug 10
Probably the tastiest Tiramisu I've ever had the pleasure of eating. It's done in the layer cake style (as opposed to the messy free-form "in a bowl" style) and is served as a perfectly cut square on a rectangular plate drizzled with chocolate sauce. The balance of flavours was spot on! The quality reminded us of the spectacular French Chocolate Mousse Cake from Three Tarts.
hungry hungry hippo
Returned this weekend, after swearing 2 years ago not to. But, we were looking for a quick meal in a slightly more formal setting and we needed to stay close to home.
First bite in, I remembered why we black listed the place. I had the jumbo scallops parpadelle. The scallops were cooked well, but the white wine sauce was bland and gummy. My wife's gnocchi with "rose sauce" was violent orange and way too 'tomato-y'. Not disimilar to Campbells tomato soup... seriously. My daughter had macaroni noodles with butter and parmesan (kids portion = $8), which was passable... but really, hard to screw up.
The wine list is small, and all but 1 (plus the house) red are only available by the bottle. Beer is standard Molson/Labatt with exception of Moretti (bottled).
Bill for 2 adult pastas, 2 Moretti, 1 glass house white, and 1 kids pasta was $78 before tip. Considering the pasta was not distinguishable from plates from East Side Mario's, I found it too expensive. Won't be back.