Supper at Pasqualli’s. Made just for us. No really, it was just us.

Posted by Michael on Sep 8, 2009 in Recipes | 0 comments

Pasqualli’s is an “American Italian Restaurant” in a beat up old hotel in Amsterdam, New York, about 60 km west of Albany. We took a little ride around the “city”, population just under 18,000 as of the 2000 census, and it’s a ghost town. It has been for many years, according to a local we spoke to. There are many, many gigantic buildings, old carpet factories among other things, that are now deserted. The whole place looks horribly rundown and many businesses are boarded up. This all happened years ago when the economy in the U.S. was doing just fine. Then the recession hit…..ouch.

So after checking on the Internet for restaurants that were not chain crap, we decided on Pasqualli’s. We walk in…..and there’s not a soul to be seen…not even an employee. We walk around the place, really tired old building that’s definitely seen better days and seats a good 100 easily, wondering what we should do. We can’t eat here, can we? Is there even anyone here? Did they leave the door open by mistake? Suddenly, a woman pops out from the bar attached to the restaurant which we become aware of at the same time. There’s three people in the small bar. “Welcome, would you like a booth?” she says, and we plop ourselves down. She quickly grabs a couple of menus for us and then says, “first, I have to explain a few things to you.” Oh boy….

“There’s no steak, there’s no clams, there’s an entire section on pizza but there’s no pizza, there’s no pork chop, no veal, no strip loin,” she says.

“is there pasta?” we ask. “Yes, there is pasta,” she says with a laugh. Like Pasqualli’s wouldn’t have pasta. Ha. Um. Ha.

Lisa orders the ravioli and I order the angel hair pasta with meatballs. Each order comes with a side salad. I also order a Saranac Imperial IPA, a local microbrew that they have on tap.

The beer was very good. We’re off to a good start – a good hoppy dark ale that I’d say is similar to Pumphouse S.O.B. Really nice. The salads come and despite the fact that the place could not be more empty, the greens, onions, cucumber and cherry tomatoes that make up this simple plate are all really crunchy fresh and delicious. Then come the pastas. A huge plate of pasta with deep red tomato sauce and meatballs for me, a pleasantly arranged plate of ravioli with tomato sauce for Lisa. Alexandra would get a bit of both of our plates. Both pastas were sublime. Perfectly cooked and we’re pretty sure the ravioli, stuffed with ricotta cheese, was handmade. None of the meal had any indication of factory-produced stuff at all. Even the tomato sauce was a really pronounced tomato flavour with none of the synthetic saltiness you’d get from a canned sauce. This was simply some fantastic food made with pride in a town that sadly had very little left.

The final bill, which included a gin and tonic, two beers, both fantastic pastas, salads and a bowl of bread with butter came to $30.89.

Our server happily pointed out that she took 10 per cent off our bill because we were staying at the hotel. I quickly corrected her by saying we were not staying at the hotel where this restaurant was, but rather at a hotel on the other side of the Interstate.

“You’re staying at ‘A’ hotel,” she says. “You’ll get 10 per cent off.”