Nice looking place with a date worthy atmohphere, but the food tasted generic and very fatty, it's a good place to treat your kids on junk-day.
Soup of the day was named something I didn't recognized but we tried it anyways, waitress said it had egg in it, which peeked my curiosity. Wasn't awful but we didn't really enjoy it. Tasted very strongly like that store bought "lipton chicken powder", which I found a bit offensive for a restaurant to charge me 6$ for. I liked the idea of many floating broken thin pieces of eggs, which had a similar texture to pasta, it was actually nice. Some greens leaves, probably parsley. We didn't like how the soup felt like basically just water, but for me it was worse because I could have done that at home since I have that chicken powder too... It's ok to have a soup that is mostly broth as a style, but that broth better be out of this world since it would be the main focus. If they had given crackers, this would had been perfect for kids or those picky popular anxiety ridden adults.
Rustica Pizza: We all liked the pizza. We shared it as an apetizer. 20$ for 4 wide slices. The fancy ingredients were not noticed since the heavy texture and flavor of the mozerella overpowered them. They could have replaced the fancy expensive meat with regular cheap deli ham and we would not have noticed. The outer crust was very nice but the dough under all the topings was undercooked. I liked the idea of how the dough was homemade there, that's nice. We should have asked them to slice it into 6 smaller slices instead of the automatic 4 big ones, which was odd since they knew all 3 of us were sharing it as an apetizer.
Panino Almafi: My mom didn't like her veal sandwich, but only told the waitress after it was done. The waitress explained that if she didn't like it, she was supose to ask for extra toppings like pickles or something. She shared it with my bro, who said it was too greasy. She really liked the salad it came with, said the dressing was very tasty, and they both enjoyed the potato fries a lot.
Linguine alla Pescators: My bro didn't find this seafood linguini worth praising, he is the silent type though. When I asked him, he just shrugged, so that means it wasn't bad.
Gnocchi Scampi: I had this, came with a rose sauce, shrimp, and scampi. My first time trying Scampi, I didn't know it would be like shrimp/lobster. I liked the scampi very much, it was very moist, tender, almost like little thin lobster tails. The shrimp was overcooked though, and some of them were hard. The scampi were half in their shells and the shrimp still had their tail shells only, which I'm sure others are use to this, but for me I didn't like the idea of shells on meat when it's mixed in sauce already. The sauce had a nice heavy creamy texture, though the garlic and herbs was very low (perfect for these Montreal wimps), not my preference. Salt and pepper helped, but not something I would have again.The plate arrived right after the waitress took our pizza plates away, so our food was sitting on their counter for I don't know how long, but my sauce was congealed, which explains why the shrimp were overcooked, since they sat there and continued cooking in the plate of hot sauce.
Yummy Mangolia: My bro said he liked it when I asked him. It came in a nice curvy glass and looked nice and thick.
Pinacolata: Ok and very simple. The y.m. looked more appealing.
Their long bar looked really nice inside and the terass seating was humble, clean, and cute. We ate inside along the wall, which had comfortable bench seats and proper air conditioning, as well as a not cluttered and breathable atmosphere.
Plenty of parking in the shared lot and easy access to a few city buses.
The young lady who seated us and refilled our water, explained that she didn't know anything about the food menu and only about the bar drinks. With a nice looking bar like that, I could imagine it's worth it for them to have someone who specializes in drinks.
Our waitress was nervous, pushy, and tried to hurry us up. The place was fairly empty during our stay, but I imagine that meant staff were busy with other chores in the back. Each order didn't take too long to arrive to our table, but it did take long to grab the waitress's attention, especially when waiting for our bill, which took over 20 minutes, then overly chatty as we were paying, probably to get a better tip.
Ordering: I asked this waitress which foods on the menu was fresh and not frozen, and she broke into a state of panic and offense that she couldn't really hold back. She explained that no restaurant in Montreal buys non-frozen meat, because if they did then they would be constantly throwing out too much food and profit. Also that meats are frozen while fresh to preserve their fresh quality. At least she was able to tell me that their pizza dough and 3 pasta dishes were made fresh and not frozen. Not excited to return soon. Chalkboard menu specials was unreadable. read more
