ottawa foodies

Wow, this went downhill quickly. :)

Meeeow!

Hiss!

Just for that your next month of food photography is going to feature prominent cat hair.

Nobody cares how you feel, you jowly sous chef cat!

AND I'M BUMMED ABOUT THAT!!!

This restaurant is now closed.

I've been here with my Celiac family members before, and it's been very enjoyable. Maple-scallops cooked *just* right, and many gluten-free options for pastas as well.

We had a groupon for Il Piccolino and went in last week to use it. We have been there a number of times in the past and always enjoyed both the food and the atmosphere. Last week was no exception. The groupon was for 2 soups or salads, 2 pastas or pizzas and a shared dessert. We started with caesar salads. We love caesars and make a pretty good one at home, but this one was really good. They must have made some big changes since the comments elsewhere on OF. The dressing is home made and creamy, romanine finely chopped, nice large garlic crouton.

I had the pasta of the day with smoked chicken, sweet corn and roasted red peppers, husband had the gnochi with gorganzola cream sauce. Both were delicious, the gorganzola was delish, but VERY rich.

We shared a chocolate mousse for dessert, but were too full!!

The service was great! The place was busy and many people had groupons. The server was on the run as he was on his own. There were no snags and we found him cheerful and gracious when a less experienced server might have fumbled.

Don't know why we don't go there more often. It was a fine evening. BTW if spring ever arrives, they have one of the best patios.

One of our favourite romantic eateries for years, my wife and I recently returned, and were not disappointed. The service was even better than we remembered - friendly, enthusiastic and knowledgeable. The food was also very good to excellent. My seafood risotto was thick with calamari and medium-sized scallops, and ringed with over a dozen oysters, topped with (not embedded in, thank heavens!) a subtly herbed rice that matched perfectly but did not overwhelm the delicate seafood flavours. My wife's pizza, while not as memorable, had a crisp crust and a satisfying blend of ingredients that went down well. Topped with the best tiramisu I have had in years, altogether a great way to start a weekend!
Minor quibbles: The Tomato bruschetta appetizer had little pockets of spiciness that annoyed me, though my wife - who is more spice-tolerant - thought it was fine. Also be aware that Il Piccolino is tiny. The ambiance is lovely when the restaurant is quiet (we were there when it opened at 5PM), but any more than half-full (by 7 or so) and it can become uncomfortably noisy and un-romantic.

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.

Had some good pasta there last night. Putanesca. I like that they'll do pretty much any substitution of sauce or pasta.

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! :-)

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

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