Pasta’s Trattoria
Main Street in Pleasanton is turning into quite a delightful place to enjoy dinner. Many of the restaurants are designed with outdoor seating in the front, making the sidewalks as pleasant as Paris or Italy on a warm Spring evening.
We ate last night at Pasta’s Trattoria, a very pleasant locally owned establishment. It was a bit more crowded and exciting than usual, I should think, because it was Prom Night for the local high school, and the place was full of handsome young men in tuxedos and beautiful young women in ball gowns, all glowing with youth and quivering with excitement. Gail thought it interesting that they were seated at tables of 8, with the girls on one side and the boys on the other.
Pasta’s Trattoria is a large place, nicely decorated in vaguely Italianate fashion. The staff are all in black and white, the boss is walking around doing his job in a Hawaiian shirt. It’s your classic friendly local place.
The menu is enormous. Huge. Gigantic. I don’t mean the choices, I mean the sheet-rock sized, plastic covered carte itself. It’s impossible to hold and unwieldy as heck on a table already cluttered with place settings, water glasses, wine glasses and a candle.
The menu choices are pretty extensive, too. Besides pasta and pizza, there is a goodly selection of meat and fish–and the meat I saw passing by looked awfully good. Great big honking slabs of beef on the plate. I was impressed with the looks of it.
Being the healthy eater I am, though, I didn’t have that. I started out with the Caprese salad.
The presentation is beautiful, it tastes just as good.
A stack of interleaved tomato and mozzarella slices, dressed with balsamic vinaigrette and topped with basil leaves and fresh pesto. No finer way to start a meal.
Ooops. Forgot that we really started the meal with the tempura asparagus, which was also wonderful.
Gail had the Tuscan Chicken soup, which was so good she wished she had ordered a bowl instead of a cup.
My entree was the penne with vodka sauce. I thought this dish was merely adequate. The chunks of salmon were clearly from a fish farm and mighty bland. The sauce was thin, and didn’t really have any vodka taste.
There was bread pudding on the menu for dessert, which I was craving, but the waitress was too busy on this evening to get back to us, so we just paid our check and left. Because we were going to the Firehouse Arts Center to see a play, we showed our tickets and got a 20% discount–another good reason to dine there.
Pasta’s Trattoria is a pleasant, reasonably priced place to get an adequate but not great meal while enjoying the sunshine and the people on the street. I’d go there again.
Totally Unauthorized 
For a great meal (more than adequate) come to Stan’s Bistro,
good atmosphere and great ambiance, too.
Reasonably priced, $3.75 including soft drink.