Standard Pasta & Pizza Bar

This restaurant is located in Little Italy. This restaurant is located at 667 College St in Toronto between Bathurst and Ossington. This place looks like a bar outside, and it looks like a bar inside. However the food is nothing like bar food I've had.

I will list three things I saw and had a taste of while there. So like I said, the food is nothing like the look of the place. I was kind of hesitant about the place itself, the place looks so bad that I did not think the food was gonna be great. The menu was not too pleasing, nothing really looked too special, and I was not impressed by the selection at all. Everything looked a little too plain. But I was very surprised by food that came.

Complimentary Bread - This did not taste too good. In Italian restaurants, they prefer to dip the bread in olive oil and balsamic vinegar. Every time I have this I am not too impressed, it's not bad, just not what I like. I prefer a very warm/hot bread that is chewy on outside, and warn and soft on the inside, that's it. So not the greatest in my opinion. But this is just the start.

Boneless Chicken in a red sauce with wine and hot peppers - This is basically a chicken breast in a very rich sauce. The sauce was amazing, it's tomato based, has wine in it, hot peppers, and I think maybe some spinach, not sure anymore. It's the second on their list of chicken. It comes with pasta, which was not too tasty. It was just penne in a tomato sauce, nothing to brag home about.

But this chicken was very tender, and the sauce was not too hot to burn, but hot enough to taste the hot peppers. although it would of been better if the chicken was on top of the pasta and this the pasta has the same sauce, this was okay too, it came seperately. But I liked this a lot because it was a little different, the wine really brought out the taste in the chicken, and the peppers were not too hot to hide the taste of the chicken, which is sometimes a problem with spicy food.

Seafood Pasta - I did not have it, but I did taste it. I saw the seafood was calamari, clams, scallops, mussels, and shrimp. They did not skimp on the seafood at all. I can't say as much about this dish, but I cansay what I tasted was that it was kinda pure. The sauce was not overtaking the rest of the dish, and it left the flavour to the seafood and the pasta.

The pasta of the day - Scallop Pasta - This pasta was slightly different, it had more scallops, and it was fettuccine. This was also a good dish, it had a cream sauce, and was rich like all the other ones. Can't say much cause I did not have it, but the scallops I can say were tasty and were not hard, nor too soft, and it had a fresh flavour to them as well.

I must say I was a bit surprised by quality of the food. I looked into the back of the restaurant and the kitchen was right in the back, easily it could of just been more space for seats, but the kitchen was open concept, everyone can see it.

The environment of the restaurant is not so great, it's not exactly pleasing to the eye. The table was slanted it looked, and everything looked old. However the food made up for all that. A good place to eat, not a date kind of place, but a good place for friends. I give it 3.3/5.0