Sunday, November 23, 2008

Pastuccio's in Santa Barbara


Nice dining room, pleasant ambiance, but please do not expect a great meal in this restaurant. My intention for this blog was to never even bother with bad restaurants, but this meal was inedible and I feel obliged to put an orange cone and flashing warning lights in front of this pot hole, before another accident occurs. In Italian the word pasticcio means "mess". I believe the name of this restaurant was no accident, just a matter of misspelling.

My dining companion was happy with his Cesar salad, but as long as it has parmigiano, romaine lettuce, croutons and a Cesar dressing, it will pass muster. Not being particularly hungry, he ordered an appetizer and called it a night. The baked brie and garlic with pear and walnuts was decent enough to be satisfying.

The car wreck started when I ordered the pumpkin ravioli with butter and sage sauce. Having had squash tortellini many times in Italy, I had a reasonable expectation as to what would be arriving at the table. Pumpkin, when roasted could be similar to the deep orange squash I had experienced eating in this classic Italian dish. Since I use Butternut squash when replicating this recipe, it was going to be nice to compare the pumpkin taste and texture to the butternut. That didn't happen. Pastuccio's uses canned and spiced pumpkin pie filling. Gag me with a spoon, or one of these ravioli. They arrived barely warm, not hot, the sage was burnt, and the pumpkin pie spices were inappropriate as well as intolerable.

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