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Dining: A quick review of Tony Pistola's
Sun, 25 Sep 2005

An old university pal of my wife was in town so we had the opportunity to gather up the clan of old friends and head out for an evening of catching up. It was a really nice time -- any time you get out with friends is a great time - and we even went mini-golfing in the dark afterwards, so a fine evening was had by all. For dinner we decided to try out this place we'd all heard of, but never been to.. a small chain thats popping up in cities here or there as I understand it. (Apparently there are 2 or 3 in the Greater Toronto Area, but a few in the US as well.) So over to Tony Pistola's we headed.

At first it seemed akin to East Side Marios, as it was a blocky building off the side of a big box mall.. though upon closer inspection we knew it was the real thing and not some fast food fake-pasta-jernt (like ESM) because it had red and white checkered table-cloths - actually made of fabric! (I admit to being a little shallow -- my criterion for a pasta house is of course good food and atmosphere, but a good atmosphere can only be had with checkered cloths. Call me old fashioned. ESM is alright for a quick lunch, but over the years its gone downhill from its former glory.. and with no checkered clothes, pfah!)

We were seated and attended to by the absolute nicest and sweetest gay waiter/bartender I'd ever met; a charming young fellow who was very obviously gay, but not so much in that trying-too-hard-way, but in the genuine kind hearted 'going to get crushed by this world' way. Anyway, I was just shocked at how nice he was to us :)

The atmosphere was nice, the typical 'pretending to be in New York City during the immigrant times', with some soft music. We chatted, and ordered some calamari -- I normally steer way way clear of fish, but my wife over the years has softened me to the point I actually enjoy a good deep fried calarmari nowadays -- and when it arrived we were amazed by the size.. maybe twice what you'd get anywhere else, so we had too much. Fine, we tried valiently to eat some of it at least.. can't take it home, being fish :(

However, it was the dinner proper that prompted this posting. We'd all ordered the 'dinner sized' portions, as it was late in the day and we were all relativly famished after working etc. Huge mistake -- apparently the norm for this place is that 'dinner sized' means 'several litres' -- literally. I snapped a photo (not yet uploaded) which shows that my Penne Saccilia (spicy penne with sausages) was literally some 4 inches or more tall across a one foot around plate. Likewise my wifes mushroom sauced penne was enormous, and Dan's risotto (mushy rice in sauce) were both a few pounds of food. Everyone was shocked as the waiter struggled to carry out these quantities of dinner -- if only we'd caught site of something being bussed out earlier, we'd have known to downgrade the sizes to the 'small edition' :) We all laboured away and enjoyed the pastas (they were all very good.. much better than ESM though not as good as some really expensive joint of course), and tell you the truth -- no one could really see their plate when they were stuffed silly. We'd all dented maybe 30% into the meals before having the waiter package it all up. Amazing.

The price? Pretty inexpensive, and a very good value for the money considering the quantity and overall quality -- my pasta was I think $10.95CDN, for a good two or three litres of food. I had it two more times over the weekend to finish it off - and I'm a big guy!

Summary: Head on over to Tony Pistola's -- it was a joy to be there with good friends, and it kept on giving days later :)

Aside, a few days later was Tux's birthday. Aphyd fed me up with Coke+Jagermeister+Goldschlagger -- sort of wreird at first, but ultimately addictive and delicious.. like a canady cane :P

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