A Little Bit About a Lot of Things

We went here on a Friday night-trying to use a buywithme coupon. Unfortunately, so was half of Cambridge. Something should have tipped me off when I called to place my take out order and got a busy signal for about 10 minutes…and when I finally got through I was told it was going to be 25 minutes.

We can’t find parking so we stop in front and run in. Bad move. There are about 10 tables inside and they are all full-you can’t tell who’s standing waiting for a table and who’s standing waiting in line to order because there really isn’t much room to stand inside. We finally make it up to the front of the line about 10 minutes later, and pay (there is a $10 minimum for credit cards) but have to wait an additional 10 minutes for our food. They are slammed and it’s pure chaos by the stove. The guy in front of me in line just walked in and ordered 2 meatball subs, and was told it was going to be 30 minutes!!

I had heard a lot of great things about this place…they had won best take out in Central Square, they have been zagat rated 2006,2007, 2008, and have good reviews on the internet…

We ordered:

The pepperoni pizza. I was surprised it was a large pizza, we were expecting a personal sized pizza-so this was a nice surprise. ($12.95) It comes with roasted red peppers and caramelized onions. It was fairly standard as far as pizzas go-and a little on the greasy side.

The spicy sausage with roasted mushrooms ($12.95)-the spicy sausage was good but the mushrooms were rubbery.

The mini arancini came 4 to an order ($5.25). They had pieces of fontina cheese stuffed inside, but didn’t have much flavor. There were definitely extra crunchy pieces of rice in the arancini which made it a little unpleasant to eat.

Chicken fingers ($6.49) were par for the course and came with honey mustard sauce.

The pasta aglio olio ($7.97) made with olive oil, parsley, garlic and chili. One of my favorite dishes when prepared correctly. This pasta had SO much chili in it that after one bite your mouth went numb. And where was the garlic? Missing I suppose.

We also got the  meatball parmasean panini (not pictured)($6.95) that was a decent size and smelled good in the car on the ride home. Not bad. Tasted better on the second day like most meatballs do!

Basta Pasta was just ok for me. I couldn’t see where the hype was about this place…but then again, it was probably due to the fact that they were slammed and couldn’t put in the attention to each dish that they should have (that’s no excuse, but perhaps the reason). I’m not sure I would go back if I had to pay full price.

 

Basta Pasta Trattoria

319 Western Ave

Cambridge, MA 02139

617-576-6672

OPEN 7 DAYS A WEEK

Mon – Sat 11AM to10PM

Sunday 3PM to 10PM

http://www.bastapastacambridge.com/

Please also come check out our Quincy location Basta Pasta Enoteca at 150 Hancock St, Quincy, MA 02171.

http:www.bastapastaenoteca.com

 

Tags: cambridge, italian, pasta, restaurant