PASTA E PASTA BY ALLEGRO
ADDRESS: 432 E 2nd Street, Los Angeles, CA 90012
INSTAGRAM: @pastaepastabyallegro
I had heard about Pasta e Pasta before my friend Yuji decided to make this our next stop in our recurring LA food exploration meals. The Instagram video that I had seen talked about the concept of Japanese pastas and how this restaurant in Little Tokyo was able to blend both Italian and Japanese styles very well into the various pasta dishes. One Friday night when both of our schedules lined up, Yuji and I made the trek down to Little Tokyo to see what this place was about.
The restaurant itself wasn’t located in the main Little Tokyo shopping / restaurant area, but rather right on that boundary between Little Tokyo neighborhood and the Arts District. We parked at a nearby garage and walked it over to the strip mall where Pasta e Pasta was located. We arrived right around 6PM, and the main dining area was already pretty full. Luckily for us, the seating area right at the counter in front of the kitchen was still open.
When you take a look through the different menu options and styles of pasta to choose from, it’s rather difficult to select because there are all these various flavors that you’d want to try. There are four main styles that the pasta dishes are grouped into: tomato sauce, garlic oil sauce, cream sauce, and Japanese style. Yuji and I decided to be bold and go with four different pasta dishes in order to get a good sampling: beef ragu spaghetti, bacon and mushrooms Japanese style, puttanesca, and the mentai Japanese cream. Did we overdo it with the quantity of dishes? Only time would tell.
All of the pasta dishes came with a portion of house salad, along with bread and butter. The house salad came with a nice Italian vinaigrette, and was a good way to start things off before we dove into the heaviness of all the pasta. If you’ve read any of my other reviews, you know how I always enjoy having a good view of the kitchen, so our seating was perfect for that. It was crazy to see the pans on the stovetop burners just be a continuous rotation of all of the different pasta dishes, keeping up with the 50 or 60 people all seated in the restaurant. It wasn’t before long that our pasta dishes came out to us, arriving two at a time.
The first two pastas that arrived out to the table were a contrast between traditional Italian style and Japanese style. The bacon and mushrooms pasta had a dashi and soy sauce base, with grated radish, shredded seaweed, and sesame seeds to go along with the two main ingredients in the namesake. A lemon wedge also helped to provide a nice hit of acidity to the overall dish to help with tying everything together. Because it was more of a broth base rather than a thicker sauce, the dish didn’t feel too heavy. The smoky and earthy flavors of the bacon and mushrooms worked well with the more delicate flavors coming from the broth.
It was then time to try out one of their signature pasta dishes: the beef ragu spaghetti. There was definitely a reason that this was annotated as one of their signature dishes on the menu, with its rich, deep flavors that just worked so well together. The ragu used San Marzano tomatoes for that umami-packed punch, with beef that was slow-cooked in the sauce to where you could use a fork to pull it apart. Pieces of zucchini complemented the beef in the ragu, with a generous amount of grated Parmesan cheese on top, finished off with a garnish of parsley. There was just the right amount of sauce to balance with the spaghetti noodles, vegetables, and beef. Once again, even with the rich flavors, I found myself surprised at how it didn’t feel too filling.
Once we got a chance to try the remaining two pasta dishes we ordered, the puttanesca and mentai cream sauce, it reaffirmed for us that we made a good selection, since each of the pasta dishes was different from the other. The puttanesca was definitely more concentrated with the seafood flavor, containing both tuna and anchovies, along with garlic, capers, and olives in a tomato sauce. Although it was still a good pasta dish, I did find it probably my least favorite amongst the four plates.
Even though I try to typically avoid dairy, I had heard a lot about this mentai cream sauce pasta that I decided it would be worth the risk. The mentai, or cod roe, definitely provided a more subtle flavor to the cream sauce, when paired together with the mushrooms and scallions. The proportion of the cream sauce to the amount of pasta was just right, leaving enough to coat the noodles and make you want more, but not feel like the dish is swimming in the sauce. Earthy and savory were the primary flavors here, with the hint of sweetness from the mentai. This dish ended up being my favorite of the evening.
In a full ranking of my preference for the pastas, it would go: mentai cream sauce -> beef ragu spaghetti -> bacon and mushrooms -> puttanesca. All four of these pastas were delicious in their own right and amazingly, we ended up polishing off all four plates of food with relative ease. I’m not sure if Yuji and I were very hungry that night or the dishes were well-portioned and didn’t end up too heavy. (Or it could have a bit of both.) I walked away impressed with my first experience with Japanese pasta dishes like this and would certainly say that this place is worth the wait. If you’re curious to check out the blend of Japanese and Italian flavors in pasta form, this is the spot for that.
Let’s now take a look at the Pasta e Pasta by Allegro Dish Spotlight. Asterisks (*) below mark my recommended dishes.
** Bacon and Mushrooms Japanese Style Sauce **
Dashi and soy sauce base with bacon and mushrooms, with grated radish and shredded seaweed on top.
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** Beef Ragu Spaghetti **
San Marzano tomato sauce with onions, zucchini, and slow-cooked beef. Topped with grated Parmesan cheese and parsley.
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** Puttanesca **
Tuna, anchovies, garlic, capers, and olive tomato sauce.
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** Mentai Japanese Cream Sauce **
Japanese style cream sauce with cod roe, mushrooms, and scallions. Topped with shredded seaweed.
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And finally, here are my rankings for Pasta e Pasta by Allegro:
Food: 4.75 / 5
The flavors in the pasta dishes that we tried really stood out, along with how each of them had its own identity as well. You could taste the high quality of the ingredients that they used and the fact that we didn’t feel overly stuffed after four pasta dishes was actually mildly surprising.
Atmosphere: 4.5 / 5
The dining area can definitely feel a bit cozy if the restaurant is packed; I definitely felt like they captured that rustic Italian feel with the interior décor, focusing on wood and brick elements. I never felt like it got too loud either, despite sitting close to other parties.
Service: 4.25 / 5
The two waitresses that helped us through the course of the meal were very polite and attentive. They came back often to clear out any finished plates that we had or if we needed any drink refills. It’s also impressive that the kitchen could continuously crank out all of those pasta dishes at an even pace.
Price: 4.75 / 5
For the quality of the ingredients and how fresh everything tasted, the prices were certainly something I’d pay again. Most of the pasta dishes on the menu hovered around the $17 / $18 price point, which were reasonable also given the location of the restaurant, too.
Overall:
18.25 / 20
(91%)
Categories: California, Restaurants
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