Pasta Brava has been serving up homely and rustic Italian dishes for years. Very little seems to have changed here—the atmosphere is very comfy and relaxed with Italian paintings and homewares and you’re always met with a warm greeting upon entry. Indeed, the staff are eccentric, opinionated and incredibly eager to interact with their guests. They even like to dress diners in bibs if they order messy long pasta items such as parpadelle. The food quality tends to be a little uneven—some days we’ve had pretty great meals, and others a little less than great. On the day we dined we found most of our orders a little wanting—while they were certainly tasty, they weren’t quite the above average offerings we’ve usually come to expect from this restaurant. The caprese salad lacked some flavor in the tomatoes, the lasagna was a little dry and our rigatoni with ox tail ragout could really have done with more ragout. Luckily our zafferano or zucchini and cream pasta was deliciously simple. Still, given the restaurant’s long-standing reputation and the number of patrons occupying seats for a mid-week dinner, we’ll give Pasta Brava the benefit of the doubt that they are doing something right. If only they could do it every time.
