SubscribeDINNER July 27, 2007
Wow! Eating dinner two nights in a row in mid-week! Quite the accomplishment. Having been tricked into playing soccer with the firm’s team, the JJ, Jimbo and I headed onto St-Laurent in Little Italy for a late Thursday dinner. Walking around I realized how many restaurants within a few blocks of my house I had never even considered visiting. We decided to take a chance on Casa Napoli, but a combination of the dreary menu, wine prices, general unkempt demeanour of our prospective waiter and the cover of “Smooth Operator” playing in the background (I am not creative enough to have made this up) caused us to flee back into the street and to Pesca, which was advertising a reasonable looking table d’hote.
Pesca is one of the nicer looking restaurants in Little Italy: a nice terrace; clean tablecloths; chairs that don’t appear to be made out of the cheapest grade of plastic known to man. And there is ambiance too, with customers holding drinks, spilling out into the street, laughing and enjoying the summer evening. I had actually eaten here twice before, when it was Quelli Della Notte. It seems like not so long ago, but there have been two name changes and at least one shooting since my last meal here.
We settled on a nice bottle of Cataretta from Sicily and tucked into the bread basket. The bread at Pesca is like an ugly girl who cleans up well. You know it’s more or less Wonder Bread but it has a buttery, salty crust with dried rosemary and a thin stream of olive oil poured into it and…next thing you know… you ate the whole thing. I know I shouldn’t have liked it….but I did. It was good that we had the bread, because ordering took a long time. Our waitress had a lot of enthusiasm but not much actual skill or knowledge. Good for running a hot dog stand in Derniere-Chance, Lac St-Jean. Not so good for serving tables at what wants to be an upscale restaurant in Little Italy. Still, I give her full marks for enthusiasm.
We shared a couple of appetizers that were hit and miss in the big way. The grilled artichokes, drenched in hot olive oil with garlic and parsley were excellent. The grilled octopus was the saddest variant I have ever been served in a restaurant. A couple of over-cooked tentacles on a bed of lettuce with a wedge of lemon. This was borderline traumatic but it reinforced my decision to have ordered pasta instead of fish. Generally, I only order fish if I’m sure its going to be a knockout and based on this last dish, I wasn’t betting on any winners to wander out of the Pesca kitchen.
My Cavatelli with tomatoes and prosciutto was average. Not terrible, but the pasta had not been stirred into the saucepan, resulting in a pool of water at the bottom of the plate. The JJ’s mushroom risotto was really salty. Four bites and you could feel the scratchiness at the back of your throat. All in all, very average.
I doubt I’ll go back to Pesca, and I probably won’t set foot in Casa Napoli again either after a very painful five minutes on their terrace. So the evening wasn’t a complete waste after all. It’s not often you kill two birds with one stone.
Cost: $150 for three with tax and tip
Rating: Two stars, although there are a lot of things on the menu that look tasty. Maybe I’ll go back after all.
Pesca
6834 St-Laurent
514.667.3867
