Grassa — Restaurant in Portland

For New Years takeout delivery, I got indulgent with a Grassa vs. Pastini pasta face-off. Both were available at the time of ordering and I was having a hard time deciding.

Long story short, I am grateful that this place is open during such a tough time to be in business. I am takeout fatigued after going on a weeklong delivery streak and am getting tired of over-salted heavy food. This should have been my cue not to order from this place. I blame my brain reacting to pretty food photos.

Bottom line is, if you want fatty and novel food that makes your reward bells ding and don't mind going into a food stupor afterward, go for it!

This food is sure to please a certain crowd. Just not a takeout-fatigued person who's had pasta from the best of both North and South of Italy, traveled Europe, Asia, the Pacific, and Australasia, and has much too high expectations.

Pastini won the pasta face-off this round.

Read on with an open mind please.

The food here is more conceptual but goes soft in execution. Not al dente.

The rest of this review is long but I'll explain my honest reasons for not liking this food.

Criteria were: • Quality of ingredients - Are the ingredients clean and good quality (locally / sustainably sourced, pasture raised, organic, Non-GMO, hormone-free, etc.) or do they make you feel sluggish after eating? No. • Flavorful - Does the food convey actual flavor, not necessarily overrelying on added salt, sugar, and fat? Sure. • Authentic - Is the food true to what it's supposed to be? No.

Clean: When I called about hormones* in the dairy used, I was told that they don't believe they use clean dairy. The pasta was soft and fatty, made you feel like slumping over in a stupor after eating.

*Dairy hormones are called rBST, recombinant bovine somatropin, a derivative of a strain of e-coli that is injected into cows to increase milk production and is transferred to humans through dairy consumption. It is currently prohibited in the European Union, British Commonwealth (including Canada, Australia and New Zealand), Japan, Israel, and Argentina. The US won't prohibit it because it is a product of the multi-trillion dollar chemical and pharmaceutical industries, purchased from Montana to by Eli Lilly in 2008. The FDA classifies it as "Generally considered safe for consumption" but it causes hormonal, metabolic, adrenal, neuroendocrine, and liver health problems. Many people have sensitivities but are not informed.

Flavorful: Texas stroganoff with brisket burnt ends, buttered noodles, criminis, mustard crema, bread & butter serranos. Mustard lent a strangely fruity flavor and meat tasted almost like artificial liquid smoke had been poured in. It was a bit of a disjointing experience. I put it aside after a few bites and didn't want to eat anymore. Radiatore with beef and pork bolognese, pancetta, and pecorino. Pasta was soft, almost to the point of being close to canned pastas with tomato sauce. In fact, I felt that I'd prefer a can of Annie's organic pasta O's to this. It had a taste that I felt might appeal more to a six year old. I wasn't too sure about it. Edit: My partner tried it and said "It's ok... Tastes like Chef Boyardee"

Authenticity: Well, with pasta you expect al dente with awesome sauce. Trying this gave me the answer to why this place was given an honorable mention by Oregon Live in consideration for Portland's top 10 pasta restaurants but "for one reason or another, didn't make the cut." You don't get al dente and you do get interesting sauce but not… awesome. Edit: My partner thought I was maybe overreacting. He tasted the food and said, "You're right... It's...

Mac & Cheese Apocalypse

I walked into the place, hoping for something simple, something comforting, and immediately realized I had stepped into chaos incarnate. Tables outside sticky, leftover crumbs stuck to surface, flies buzzing lazily around like the staff didn’t even notice. Inside, the cooks were laughing, gossiping, every glance from them felt like judgment, but the absolute lack of awareness was staggering.

The server floated through this mess like she was on a catwalk, ego so inflated she seemed untouchable. Every word, every movement screamed “I am the top here,” and yet she couldn’t answer a question about the menu without rolling her eyes or shrugging, pretending knowledge and concern were below her

A tattooed man, cap perpetually shielding the top of his head, t-shirt full of random slogans and nonsense that had nothing to do with the restaurant, wandering like he had no concept of supervision. He flirted with the teenage staff, walked past customers like they didn’t exist, and somehow, this disaster had been given the reins of the place.

Finally, the food arrived. I wish it hadn’t. Shelled mac and cheese with pork belly, massive portion. But what a trap. Pasta undercooked, chewy, as if it had barely been boiled. Cheese: overwhelmingly sweet, cloying, artificial, chemical overload, every bite making my teeth ache and my stomach revolt. And the pork belly — fat so thick, so overpowering that every bite made me gag, spit, and struggle to swallow. Half the pork was unrecognizable fat. Fat chunks stuck to my teeth, slid across my tongue, and made me question how anyone could serve this and consider it food. Non-organic black pepper coated the dish in an artificial, chemical haze, bitterness masking every attempt at flavor. My partner, sitting next to me, nearly vomited, pale-faced, pushing her plate back, both of us trying desperately not to inhale the fumes from this culinary nightmare.

Every chew was agony. Every bite of fat, every mouthful of sickly sweet cheese, felt like a health hazard. Fat content astronomical, sugar levels catastrophic, carbohydrates spiking insulin through the roof. Anyone with diabetes, heart problems, digestive sensitivity, or even a normal metabolism would be risking real danger. I kept thinking: how can a place put this on a menu without warnings? The taste alone was assaulting; the health implications, severe.

We tried to salvage the experience, but it was impossible. Outside tables sticky, every surface a reminder of neglect. The smell of fat lingered, invading clothing, hair, skin. Every attempt to take a bite was a gamble with my stomach, every forkful a confrontation with nausea. By the time we reached home — one block away — we were both vomiting, gagging violently, completely traumatized. This was not “bad food,” this was a...

Forcing online ordering for pickup orders is annoying. So is not picking up the phone. So is forcing a 20% gratuity on online orders because of "unprecedented times". Just pay your workers a fair wage and increase your prices if necessary. I will never order from here again because of this.

But to be fair, the food is excellent.

Edit: to elaborate - of course you can go and order in person. But that kind of defeats the point of ordering ahead of time IE not wanting to wait. When trying to call, there was an automated response directing pickup orders to be placed online. After waiting for someone to pick up the phone for 5 minutes without response, I succumbed to the online ordering process. Which forces a 20% gratuity and also requires you to submit personal information to setup an account to place an order. There is no guest order option. The ordering process also defaults to saving your credit card information.

So essentially (by not prioritizing phone responses and with the online system) you are forcing your customers who want to order delivery or pickup ahead of time to submit personal data to yet another random app service, which then sells that data as part of their business model.

And on top of that you increase the price of your food by 20% using covid as an excuse - which might've been acceptable a year ago, but certainly not when 70% of the state is Vaccinated and we are returning to normal.

The only saving grace is that the food is actually great. Its a shame your ordering process screws over your...