With a name like The Pasta Bowl, you can only expect one thing on the menu: Pasta. This is a dieters nightmare as not only is there only pasta on the menu but the portions were huge and 80% of the sauces had cream in it. So definitely don't come here when you're on a diet. Unfortunately, I was recovering from a nasty bout of food poisoning, so I wasn't really in the mood to go for a heavy meal but I still got the appeal of a place like The Pasta Bowl. Even though I'm trying to cut out carbs, there's just nothing more comforting than a nice big bowl of pasta to coat your stomach.
The decor and setting is very casual and family friendly. It's definitely not a high-end Italian place like L'Artusi or Babbo where you would expect fresh homemade pasta - actually I'm 100% sure the pasta is not freshly made and came from a box, so just be prepared for that. But in any case, it was still a very hard decision what to go with. Since I was trying to be mindful of my sensitive stomach, I chose one of the few pastas that didn't have a heavy cream sauce: capellini pomodoro with sliced chicken and Deanna, Soph and I split the spinach salad. Deanna got the pesto pasta and Soph got the lobster ravioli. The spinach salad was your standard run of the mill version with mushrooms, tomatoes, red onion and goat cheese topped with balsamic vinaigrette. It was a bit too heavily dressed for me even with my sensitive stomach. The pasta dishes are what you expect from the Midwest, unnecessarily giant bowls of food. My pasta came with a basic tomato sauce, basil, parmesan cheese, and mozzarella cheese. The chicken was cut up into small pieces versus large slices and cooked together with everything. It was a perfectly fine basic pasta dish but it was definitely something I could have totally made at home by myself and this is generally why I don't go for low-medium end Italian food when I eat out. I will note that Soph's dish had a lot of pieces of ravioli - generally when you order ravioli you get like 3 pieces max but here she must have had at least 5-6 very large pieces.
This is the kind of place where you come if you are too lazy to make food at home and you want something soothing and comforting. If you're looking for high-end Italian food, this is not your place. But if you looking for something casual, low key and will completely stuff you to the brim, then this is your place. I should mention that this place is BYOB, so don't forget to bring something with you or there are a few places down the block that sell wine and beer. Total bill: Unknown, Deanna kindly paid for my birthday
Photo Credit: Yelp
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