CAFE PASTA - ROUND 2

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You know it's not easy trying to find a place to eat that is not Chinese, pizza/Italian, or Mexican.  You can't swing a dead cat without hitting one or more of these restaurants.  I think little Reidsville has eight pizza parlors and probably five Chinese diners and three Mexican.  These are all supplemented with dozens of fast food and "greasy spoon" joints.

Cafe Pasta on State St. in Greensboro is obviously an Italian themed eatery.  We were there for a second time since July because we had bought a two-part Groupon which entitled us to a $40 discount on two visits.  We paid $20 for that $40 Groupon.  We had to go back to Cafe Pasta a second time to get our money's worth.

I can't say the food was any better on the second visit, but it wasn't any worse.  This review will be brief as it's our second visit to Cafe Pasta.  You can learn more about the restaurant by clicking here.

I suspect you will like Cafe Pasta much better than we did because we are pretty damn snooty about our food.  Many years ago, we liked Cafe Pasta.  Either our tastes have changed or Cafe Pasta has slipped.

Cafe Pasta was much busier on our second visit.  It was a Friday night.  The place was not crowded and there was no waiting line, but there were definitely many more customers.  There were customers on the second floor and may ten or more at the bar and maybe ten on the main floor where we were seated.

We got a seat right away at around 6:30 PM.

Here are Cafe Pasta's bread and the sauce we were supposed to receive on our first visit.  Our waitress told us the kitchen was busy preparing the sauce and it would be served soon.  The sauce never appeared and instead we were given some sort of olive oil with herbs and spices.  It wasn't very good - nearly inedible.  This red sauce with Parmesan cheese was much better, at least I liked it - Debbie did not.  The bread was cold and a little tough just like on the first visit.

This is the spinach and artichoke appetizer.  It contained cream cheese and 11 secret herbs and spices.

This was a huge plate of food, suitable for four people as an appetizer or for two people as a dinner.  The toast points were soft and sprinkled with Parmesan cheese.  It was so much food, I could not finish the entire dish, even though I continued eating it with my entree.

Debbie thought her own version of spinach and artichokes is much better than Cafe Pasta.  I would agree Debbie's version is better, but still, Cafe Pasta did a pretty nice job with the dish.  And, I don't get the Parmesan toast points in Debbie's version.  The toast was good.

Debbie piles the spinach and artichokes onto a toast point.

Despite her complaints,  Debbie seemed to enjoy the dip.



This is Mary and her pepper grinder.  Mary was our waitress on the first visit to Cafe Pasta and our second visit.  I didn't remember her, but amazingly Mary remembered us from our first visit nearly four months ago.  I don't know, but I suspect it was my now unconventional camera (non-cell phone) that gave away our not so secret diner identifies.

In addition to the pepper, Mary also doled out the Parmesan cheese for our entrees.

Mary said her hair was very blond on our first visit, but she had to change the color of her hair for a wedding.  Apparently, the bride did not care for Mary's "hooker look".  Just a note: I believe Mary had a ring in her nose on the left side.  I'm not sure if the ring had any meaning or was just jewelry.

We were also briefly attended to by two other persons - an older man and a young girl.  The service in Cafe Pasta was not lacking.

Mary rains Parmesan cheese on Debbie's Linguine Rustica.  This is a pasta dish, of course.  It contained shrimp and chicken with sun-dried tomatoes with lemon and olive oil over mixed greens.

Debbie really didn't want this dish, but she ordered it because it did not contain any red tomato sauce and I had already declared dibs on what she really wanted.

Debbie complained the linguine in the Linguine Rustica was too short to properly twirl on her spoon.  This seemed to be a major disappointment to her.

I thought her chicken was chewy.  I didn't try any shrimp or pasta or greens.

I have several good photos of Debbie with pasta hanging out of her mouth, but I won't show them out of fear for my safety.

I tried twirling my South Beach, but I was too clumsy.  The angel hair pasta that formed the base was the perfect length for twirling, but I was a miserable failure at the art.  I give up on twirling.  I'll eat my pasta using a fork and nothing else.

South Beach sounds like a diet dish, but it was far from diet.  Scallops are served with artichoke hearts and roasted red peppers.

Mary added more Parmesan to the Parmesan cream sauce that bound everything together.  You can see the Parmesan falling from her spoon.

This dish was delicious.  The scallops were incredibly tender and tasty.  There weren't enough scallops to totally satisfy me, but it was still very good.

This is a close-up view of the spinach and artichoke dip on the toast point.

We did not order dessert.  The dessert menu was a repetition of our first visit and, thanks to the huge serving of spinach and artichoke dip, we were too full to eat anything else.  If you decide to have dessert, we recommend the Tiramisu which we had on our first visit.

The total cost of dinner was about $54 with tip and tax.  I had a Groupon which saved me $20 off that total.