An Italian Double Agent

I've finally come to the realization accept that Italian eateries aren't going to have American style macaroni and cheese.  While I don't think it's too hard for them to have pasta + cheese and I still scour the menu hoping for it, but am prepared for the inevitable defeat.  My one saving grace is the children's menu.  American kids are often given the same options that they've got at home and after my positive results at Strizzi's I was emboldened to once again ask if it was ok to order off the child's menu.  Since I'm writing a review... it must have meant that I was able to!

Pasta Pomodoro is a SF Bay Area Italian chain, focusing on the use of fresh ingredients in the preparation of modern Italian dishes (not sure exactly what modern vs classic is, but that's a discussion for a completely different blog).  They've got a number of restaurants close to me and with a friend in the area during the Xmas holiday, our choice for dinner that evening was the local Pasta Pomodoro. 

The Review

Brand:
Pasta Pomodoro's Cheesy Pasta.

Watch out!  Full moon!  There could be Mac n' cheese hungry werewolves on the prowl!

Price:
$6.95 at Pasta Pomodoro

So many options for the kids to choose from!

Packaging Menu Description:
10 and under $6.95
Meals Include:
Choice of soda, milk, lemonade or apple juice
Choice of chocolate sundae or organic sliced apples

Preparation:
* Using their handy find a restaurant tool on their website get yourself to the one.  Maybe you'll be able to enjoy a film or something else before stopping in depending on the location of the closest Pasta Pomodoro to you.

*Upon entering the restaurant, go up to the host/hostess podium and let them know how many people are in your party.  They'll seat you once there is a table open.

Just inside the front door of the restaurant.  A large bar area was to the left along with more tables, all of which were hopping.  There are also tables that run along the wall on the right side of the picture that you can partially see.  Again, I am taking limited internal shots because I'm trying to avoid those just trying to enjoy a meal and making them a focus of my pictures, or restaurants wondering what the hell I'm doing snapping photos like a Paparazzi.

*If you're set on having the Cheesy Pasta, make sure to either have brought someone under 10 or asked your server if it's ok.  I was told not only was it fine, but they did a double order for me, since the portion size was so 'small'.  (Before I ordered, I asked what exactly Cheesy Pasta was since the title was a tad bit vague, even though cheesy pasta is really what a mac is.  The waitress told me that it was basically a tomato cream sauce with big chunks of provolone and noodles.  While it's not *exactly* a standard mac, I've reviewed a number of non-standards and the addition of tomato didn't turn me away.)

*Sometimes you end up having a long wait for your food.  Maybe the kitchen is busy from large parties or it's short handed.  Either way, we ended up waiting a LONG time before our meals were served.  I knew the pasta dish was mine because I didn't order the Chicken Parmesan. At first look, this was WAY more tomato than I was expecting and I sure didn't see any chunks of Provolone.

The only cheese that was on this pasta was the Parmesan that they sprinkled on for me after it was served.

*Eventually our waitress checked in on us and discovered that I was served the wrong dish (I believe she called what I was served the classic Pomodoro) and quickly got me what I had actually ordered.

While a bit redder than this picture made it out to be, feast your eyes on Cheesy Pasta!

*Now that I had the correct dish the blog review could proceed once again. 

*Commence with the nomming!


Taste:
The original dish was a very tomato heavy dish.  More or less a very chunky tomato sauce you would find served with a spaghetti dish but instead there were shell noodles.  Wait, I'm doing the wrong dish.  **record scratch**

Once I got the correct dish I was treated to very al dente noodles and a cheese sauce that was only kinda cheesy.  There were major tomato undertones to the cream sauce (and chunks of tomato in it) and really no real cheese notes.  There was also supposed to be chunks of Provolone cheese in there for added cheesiness but I still had a hard time finding them outside of a few shells that had what seemed to be cheese inside of them.

Final Score:
If I was scoring the restaurant as a whole, I would be putting up Worst service ever banners because of the errors, long waits for everything (order placing, drinks (sodas), refills and our food) and the fact that we were basically forgotten.  Fortunately for them I'm reviewing the mac.  Unfortunately, it didn't fair much better than the service.  There was very little 'Cheesy' in the dish and the sauce reminded me of something akin to an Alfredo sauce that had tomato tossed in (and was somewhat similar to canned kids ravioli meals).  If you take a look at the nutritional information, the calories and fat for this dish are beyond horrible for a kid to be eating as well.  This was made worse for me because they gave me a double order to give me a more adult sized portion.  Thankfully I don't eat lots of a mac if I don't like it and I was doubly lucky because I had already eaten half of my first dinner before I had ever gotten the mac so there was minimal damage to my waistline. 

Nutritional Information:
While their website lists nutritional information on all of their meals here, there isn't anything named Cheesy Pasta in the kids section of the nutritional information.  They do have a meal called 'Easy Cheesy' which is listed at 574 calories while the kids menu lists Cheesy Pasta with 575 calories.  Because of that, I will be using the Easy Cheesy information for the post.

Calories  574
Total Fat 38g
Saturated Fat  25g
Protein  13g
Carbohydrates  45g
Fiber  2g
Sodium  584mg