Pastissima — Restaurant in San Felipe

Four of us are staying in Casco Viejo and had dinner in this restaurant tonight. The restaurant itself is small, intimate and beautifully decorated. Great for a romantic dinner or a celebration.

We are two couples so my girlfriend and I decided to share a Caesar salad as a starter. The menu said it came with onions, tomatoes and croutons. She doesn’t eat onions or tomatoes and I don’t eat dead bread so we were prepared to fitz with it a bit.

The salad arrived and it was literally HALF onions. We filled two side plates with onions after picking them out of the salad! There was hardly any lettuce. We handed the salad back to the waiter and said, “no thanks.”

After consulting with the kitchen, the waiter came back to inform me that the chef said “this is how they serve it in Italy.” So I wagged my finger at him and said, no that's not correct (in Spanish) because:

I'm Italian and was just in Italy last September. Caesar salad was invented in Tijuana, Mexico.

We finally got a salad with lettuce, tomatoes and croutons. The dressing was creamy ranch (I think) and there was ZERO garlic! Sigh.

For my main, I ordered gluten-free pesto pasta with chicken breast. There was no garlic in the pesto sauce. In fact, no one at our table had garlic in anything! So apparently, this was a garlic-free kitchen.

The other meals were satisfactory but nothing special. Lemon pie for dessert tasted more like key lime pie. Brownie with ice cream was okay. One of the waiters explained that the chef is not very flexible with changes to the menu. Fair enough. Be warned!

We still tipped 18% and thanked the wait staff for all their help. I explained to them that it was not their fault and we appreciated everything they tried...

Good location - right next to Avenida A and Plaza Herrera - with a massive tourist traffic in the city. We popped in there somewhat by accident - the other Italian place nearby (Madre) was already closed. Well decorated interior, yet you do not feel that specific atmosphere of an Italian restaurant. We were told upfront there is no pizza (and a few other dishes) for order. We did see some other guys had been taking place at the table yet having reviewed the menu and being told the pizza story, left the venue. Service is not top of the notch, and we left the tip only because of some habit we fostered over the years. Pasta (Frutti di Mare and Vongole) OK yet small portions. No salt and pepper offered for Caprese salad - and the cheese was certainly not a "bufala" - just a plain mozarella. Miserable Rose Sangiovese wine. Tiramisu - like from a supermarket. Also, not a good practice to keep the toilet visible (open door) to the dining room. New cutlery set should be offered for the next course. Too many times we had to serve the wine ourselves. venue is expensive - no wonder given the location though. All in all - very unlikely we would visit Pastissima again on our next trip...

Very cute spot that we were excited to eat at but turned out to be disappointing. We ordered the classic carbonara and mare d monte. The carbonara was dry, didn’t seem to have any egg, the bacon over cooked and the pasta was too Al dente. The seafood in the mare d monte was excellent and the sauce was flavorful but very runny, they needed to thicken it a bit. The pasta in that dish was also too Al dente. On top of that the server forgot to bring our bread until we were almost finished eating. For being so expensive I’d expected better food and service. This place has so much potential and they just need to fix...