Taste of the Town: Pasta Pasta

By Jonathan Chong
Western Herald

Another week begins, and I hope everyone had a great spring break (hopefully at warmer places).

This week, a group of friends and I visited a little casual Italian eatery on West Main Street. 

Many might miss this little locally owned restaurant that sits at the corner of Western Michigan University and Kalamazoo College. 

The restaurant is decorated simply with warm low lights, white tablecloth, and a few paintings on the wall. They have an open kitchen concept where most of the cooking is done allowing patrons a whit of how the food is prepared. 

We were seated quite promptly and off we were, trying to decide on what we wanted our pastas with. 

The dinner menu consists of appetizers like stuffed mushrooms, garlic bread, bruschetta, and a few options for salads and soups and a large selection of pasta served with almost every kind of sauce combination.

Our group settled on an order of feta bruschetta and stuffed mushrooms, a bowl of wilted rose soup, sun dried cheese ravioli, exotic mushroom linguini, and the salmon Provencal. 

The stuffed mushrooms and feta bruschetta arrived after a short wait. The bruschetta of roma tomatoes, red onions, basil and garlic atop a grilled crostini was refreshing. The hint of garlic brought out the sweet flavors of the tomatoes, red onions, and basil. The stuffed mushrooms were not such a big hit. The stuffing was a little heavy and a little under-seasoned. 

The wilted rose soup, which was a garlic soup with a hint of white wine and red pepper, was nicely seasoned, and the robust smell of the garlic was quite appetizing.

The pastas followed thereafter with the sun dried cheese ravioli, which was a simple cheese ravioli topped with sun dried tomato sauce. A very simple dish, with mediocre taste at best.

The exotic mushroom linguini was a blend of mushrooms tossed in cream sauce, red onions and garlic. The linguini was slightly overcooked for my liking, but the sauce was well-made, with the sweetness of mushrooms and onions blending well with the sauce. 

The salmon Provencal, a salmon filet sautéed with Provencal butter and a nice slice of bread, was quite well cooked. The taste was not very memorable, but it was fairly well made. 

All in all, not too bad a meal at Pasta Pasta. The sauces were well-made and seasoned, and the simplicity of the restaurant allows visitors to just sit there for a couple of minutes and forget about the daily worries.

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Posted by heraldstaff on Mar 10 2010. Filed under A & E, Weekend Scene. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry

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