Louise’s Trattoria

WAIT WHAT!!! Louise’s is closed :(!?!
I love that this location is in Old Town, and it’s so convenient, and Louise’s is such a solid Italian place.
The rosemary garlic focaccia bread basket is one of the best starters anywhere, and their pappardelle pasta with spicy sausage is my favorite. The Louise’s chop salad is also the freshest salad out there. Really sad it’s closed. I love Louise’s!

Great food it’s just sad they’re going to be closing this location down soon. I love the rosemary lamb chops and the penne Parma rosa with shrimp and the ravioli de casa was really good too. I tried the beef sirloin was good and my wife had the cease salad with grilled salmon which is always great. Daughter order the penne Parma rosa with chicken. Really good I’d rather eat the shrimp instead.

Hmmmmmm… They said they were closing when I was last there a few months ago, but last night I drive by and there it is, right as rain, exactly the same place.
So I guess it didn’t close down.
Thought I ‘d let you know.

These five stars are for the best tasting pasta I have ever tried! It is the Papardelle with spicy italian sausage!
The sauce was a rich and creamy tomato cream sauce that was perfectly savory without making you feel overwhelmed with cream like Alfredo.
The Papardelle was al dente and the sausage was very good. This beats any other regular pasta dishes at Bucas, Cheesecake Factory, etc.
The free focaccia was divine and when I asked to take my leftovers home the waiter gave me and the boyfriend a whole bag full of them! Score !!
It’s sad to see so many negative reviews because this place is really great!

If you’ve walked the Old Town Pasadena strip, chances are that you walked right by this little gem, maybe you even looked in the window. After dozens of walk-by’s, I finally decided to stop in, and I discovered something I never knew I was missing.
Tuesday night, and our party of two was seated immediately. The server sat us down (no host?), and got us drinks and brought out the garlic focaccia and oil/​balsamic. I wasn’t a fan of the taste, a bit too much salt and garlic for my taste, as well as hints of something I couldn’t put my finger on.
Next came the Minestrone and Pappardelle with Italian Sausage, $ 7(?) and $ 15, so just about in line with the «Italian Impostor».
Without a doubt in my mind, that pasta dish is the best Italian plate I’ve ever had. The pappardelle was amazingly tasty and perfectly al dente, and the slight variations within the noodles made me believe that it was freshly made. The Italian sausage was spicy and full of flavor, perfect for this dish. Tomato cream sauce was so shockingly good, it made me want to drink it from the bowl. After the second bite, I knew that this was the new standard for Italian. And the Minestrone? Well, it was good, maybe the best I’ve had, but completely shadowed by the pasta.
Dessert was Tiramisu, and I couldn’t help but have more than one bite (I’m not the biggest T fan). It’s light, airy texture and delicate mocha hints were like nothing I’d ever tried. Another top for me.
The night almost ended in tears, as we were told that the restaurant was soon-​to-​close. They have lost the lease and have been getting the «this is the last week» for a few weeks now. I quickly asked for the recipe for the cream sauce!
If you have been on the fence about this place, go while you still can. I know I will.
Arrivederci!

Nestled on the corner of a very busy street the location could not have been better! It was a toss up between Louise’s Trattoria and The Cheesecake Factory across the street… Trattoria it was. Met family and friends here after the Rosebowl Game and worried they were going to be busy, we were seated for a party of 10 rather quicker than I thought.
The menu offers many different fish, poultry and meat dishes, as well as vegan. For the price of each dish, you definitely get your moneys worth. My left overs looked like I ordered 2 dishes when it was the leftovers of my original dish, meaning they have great big portions. The starter bread it AMAZING!!! It’s a fresh foccacia, sour dough like bread that goes so well with their homemade olive oil with spices dipping sauce. The bread alone is what I will order next time.

I used to be a student at Pasadena City College so coming down to Louise’s was somewhat of a must! My friend and I love the garlic focaccia served with oil-​vinegar (yummm) I mean we can eat two baskets of those haha. The bread is light and fluffy tastes like a square version of Stonefire Grills breadsticks.
My second favorite here is the pasta of course! The different flavor of sauces are always on point!!! I’ve had my share here even though I can’t remember what I’ve had before. Last night I ordered the clam linguini. It was a first since I didn’t see anything else I’d like to eat on the menu. I’m not a fan of clams I don’t eat them but I gave one a try and that was it! Lol no more clams for me haha the pasta with the sauce however was amazing! I could have ate a whole plate of it. Yummmm.
They have parking right next to the restaurant. 90 minutes free and the rest I believe it’s a dollar or two for every other hour. Go enjoy! Bön appetite!

Under normal circumstances, I would give Louise’s 3-​stars, because it’s not the most amazing Italian food, but I’ve had decent enough experiences.
The extra star is because they are sensitive to the needs of those with Celiac Disease and gluten intolerance, like my boyfriend, offering gluten-​free pasta as a substitute with several of the pasta dishes. My family has gotten food here several times, and the bf has never had a reaction, meaning they listen when we say he’s sensitive to cross-​contamination.

Finally got to sit down and have a nice meal all to myself! After reading one of the previous Unilocaler’s review, I realized that I may never get a chance to eat here in Pasadena if the rumors were true of them closing soon. So with that, it made my decision on where to eat that night much easier.
Dining for one!
Prix Fixe Menu $ 16 (Monday-​Wednesday 4:00pm-Close) This is for dine-​in only.
STARTER
Salad or Soup — I ordered the Minestrone Soup
ENTREE
Chicken Parmigiana — The portion was HUGE! I literally took a few bites and I was full
Chicken Marsala
Tilapia Pomodoro
Linguine & Clams — What I really wanted
Rigatoni with Italian Sausage
Rigatoni Bolognese
Penne Asparagus
Penne with Chicken
DESSERT
Tiramisu — Small slice of cake (good for one person)
I added a glass of white wine ($ 5) can also do red if you so choose. Everyone on Unilocal has been talking about their amazing to die for bread, yet to me it was just okay. Nothing incredibly special or something better than what I have already had. The staff was very nice and attentive. The bathrooms are downstairs (I had no idea that there was a basement!) I was so confused when they told me. I think they bathrooms needs some serious help. But I am really sad to see this place go even though it was my first time dining at Louise’s. There are many other things I want to try off the menu. Must do it before they leave town. The manager or whoever I spoke to informed me that it might be at the end of the year that a pizza restaurant will be taking its place. Pizza/​Sports Bar type restaurant. Doesn’t Colorado have a ton of those already?

Great location which is right in the middle of everything in Pasadena which has parking conveniently located around the corner. Bars and other eateries as well as stores to shop at are all really close by.
We were here for a birthday celebration on a Monday night and there was about 7 of us. It wasn’t very packed but I’m assuming it was typical for a Monday night. First off, their bread was delicious and they graciously provided more upon our request. Server and waiter were very accommodating and pleasant although he forgot that 3 people at the table ordered the prix fix menu (that comes with dessert) and asked if anyone would like to see the dessert menu.
The prix fix menu is actually a deal with a choice of soup/​salad with several entrees to choose from and dessert for $ 16. I ordered spaghetti and meatballs which was just okay. I almost felt that I could have made this at home myself and bought some spaghetti sauce with more flavor. I expected more flavor in the sauce and expected the meatballs to be better. My gf ordered the chicken marsala and the chicken was a bit dry. Someone else at the table also ordered the same and again the same result with the chicken.

Great service from this place! The food was good. The fettuccine de Marie is to die for.
I really loved the service here.
Our waiter was really attentive and my drink was always filled. I like this place better than mi Piace across the street. The food here is better quality.

Cute little place in old town Pasadena. There’s a parking garage right next door which you can get validation for.
We came on a Saturday night so it was pretty packed. I wouldn’t recommend big parties but very cute for dinner or a date. It’s not a fancy restaurant so no worries about dressing up!
First let me just say their bread is soooo delicious. It’s served with oil and vinegar and is absolutely delicious and they bring more! :) I decided to get the linguine with clams, fresh fish, scallops, and mussels. It was cooked well but it definitely wasnt out of this world. But their known dish is the pappardelle pasta with sausage.
They also have half off wine bottles so that was definitely another bonus! The service here was decent. Our waiter was really nice and offered his opinions on the food. The one thing I didn’t really care for was that they never really cleared the table with the plates we used for the bread and the tables aren’t that big to begin with.
Prices are pretty reasonable, an entrée costs about $ 12-​$ 18 depending on what you get. It’s definitely Italian food!

I came here on a Friday around 6 pm with a couple of my friends. There were only a couple of other groups dining because it was still pretty early but more people trickled in as we were eating.
The complimentary bread with the oil and vinegar was good so we had to be sure not to fill up on too much before our dishes arrived. One of my friends is a big fan of cheese and ordered the Four Cheese Ravioli. She said that the ravioli was really good and very cheesy. My other friend and I shared a Fettuccine Di Mare and a Cajun Jambalaya. The two pasta dishes I ordered were super good. The pasta was perfectly chewy, and the flavor of the sauces was very well balanced. I enjoyed the subtle spiciness of the Jambalaya (wasn’t too spicy) and the lemony-​ness of the Fettuccine. My friend and I both agreed that those were probably some of the best pastas we’ve had!
I definitely will be back here again, maybe on special occasions. Surprisingly, the restaurant has average prices for an Italian restaurant, especially at a nice restaurant in Old Town Pasadena. It’s very very true. Parking around the area is such a hassle. We did the $ 5 maximum parking at Old Town and did some shopping before and after dinner, so it was a great way to enjoy the day there without worrying about parking. Other parking options in Old Town are street parking and a free 90-​min parking lot. This is a good restaurant to try if you are craving for some pastas and you’re around the Pasadena area :)

Mondays-​Wednesdays HH 4pm-​Close!!!
Well not a traditional HH more like an amazing 3-​course meal for only $ 16. Which I must say is an INCREDIBLE deal seeing as one plate of pasta here can be $ 12+.
The bread here is warrant for a visit. Nice warm focaccia with herbs and onions adorning’s it soft top layer. ^_​^ YUMMMM
For Starters I had the Louise’s House Salad, which was yummy pretty nice size portion. It’s pretty festive with tomatoes and crispy onion strips. Tossed to perfection just enough dressing not too soggy. Really great choice for a starter.
For my entrée I got the Penne Asparagus VEGETARIAN
(Asparagus, mushrooms, fresh roma tomatoes, garlic,
sun-​dried tomatoes, pesto, and Parmigiano-​Reggiano) which was AMAZING! Huge portion couldn’t finish it all paired with the salad. Great flavors crunchy asparagus, chewy mushrooms; everything about this dish was delightful.
For dessert no option just the Tiramisu which wasn’t my favorite. I’m not a huge fan of the coffee flavor of tiramisu. The texture was great all spongy and ish but the bitterness was too much for me to handle. But fans of tiramisu make enjoy this dessert. I would of preferred the cheesecake or more options for dessert but the price is still really good for the 3 courses.
Really nice restaurant. Great menu, great price!

Called on a Tuesday to make a reservation for Saturday. I had a feeling we would have an issue because the incompetent girl kept getting the day wrong when she tried to confirm the reservation. I had to correct her at least a couple of times. Indeed when we arrived Saturday night, they did not have our reservation. Ugh… so annoying! Luckily a table opened up soon after and we were seated within 15 minutes.
They start you off with complimentary focaccia bread which is a nice gesture. But the bread was cold, didn’t have a lot of flavor and was on the doughy side. Perhaps a few more minutes in the oven could have given it better texture and helped to enhance the flavor.
I wanted to start off with some greens so that I wouldn’t feel as guilty for having snacked on the focaccia and for ordering carbs as my main entrée. I settled on the Insalata Mista (baby organic lettuce, Gorgonzola cheese, carrots and roma tomatoes with balsamic vinaigrette). The salad was ok, nothing special.
I’m always looking for an excuse to have pasta. Since we were dining at an Italian restaurant, I had no other choice but to order pasta. I decided to try the Fettuccine di Mare (tender prawns, sea scallops and asparagus sauteed in a lemon garlic cream sauce). I always hated asparagus when I was young, but there’s an old wives tale that your taste buds change every 7 years. Perhaps that’s true because I don’t seem to mind it much anymore. I’ve also developed a strange fascination with the smell of asparagus pee, lol. Hmmm… maybe that’s TMI. Anyway, my dish was good. The pasta was al dente, there was a good amount of seafood, and the sauce was delicious… not overly heavy which sometimes cream sauces can get, and I liked the lemony finish.
Service could have been better. It was GNO for us so of course we wanted a group picture. We asked the waiter to help take it for us, and he gave us an annoyed look.
Overall with the crappy service and semi-​decent food, I’d give this place 2 stars.

Louise’s Trattoria is by far one of the best Italian restaurant I have been to. The service was phenomenal! Our waitress was very cheerful and made our experience one to never forget. I have always seen this restaurant in old town Pasadena and have been wanting to try it but never got the chance, so once the travel zoo deal came out I thought it was our chance to try Louise’s.
The travel zoo deal was $ 49 for two people and you got the following: two beverages of your choice including alcoholic beverages such as beer or wine, two appetizers/​salad, two entrée, and one dessert to share. I got the crab cakes are it was delicious. The dish came with 2 perfect size crab cake and a avocado side with a hint of lime to complement the crab cakes. My fiancée got the ahi tuna salad which was also yummy. The ahi tuna was cooked just right and the salad was full of mixed greens, crunchy wonton skin strips, slides of oranges and a gingery sweet dressing drizzled on top. The salad was large enough for two people to share. As for the entrée, I had the cajun jambalaya that had the right amount of spiciness level, not too much to the point where your nose is runny and not too little where you don’t feel the heat. The dish came with chicken, shrimp, spicy sausage and mushroom in spaghetti noodles. The other entrée I tried was fettuccine de mare, which came with scallop, shrimp, and asparagus. This dish was mediocre and nothing out of the ordinary. As for dessert, we decided to try the tiramisu. The tiramisu did not have strong of an espresso flavor as I expected but the it was still tasty because there was a lot of masacarpone cheese/​cream.
As for parking, there is a lot down the street on fair oaks and green that is 90 minutes free w/​o validation.
Overall: the service was amazing and I would definitely go back because the food was delicious.

Louise’s Trattoria is one of main anchor restaurants in Old Town Pasadena that is a must try for Italian food. It is conveniently located on the corner of Fair Oaks Ave. and Colorado Blvd. Parking is conveniently located in a parking structure south of the restaurant. If you park in the structure, 90 minutes is free without validation unless you leave the parking structure after 10pm.
I was warmly greeted by one of the waiters as I entered the restaurant and sat me to my table. I was impressed by the high level of service as they made sure my meal was perfect. I was dressed very casual so I am glad that this did not deter from the level of service. I ordered their lunch portion lasagna which included a choice of minestrone soup or salad. The soup was great, but I looked over to an adjacent table and saw that the side salad looked pretty delicious as well. They also gave me some focaccia bread with oil and vinegar which was decent. After I ate the bread and soup, I thought to myself, I better slow down because the bread and soup already made me somewhat full. Luckily, the lunch portion lasagna was manageable size.
At the end of my meal, I was stuffed and happy that I came here for lunch today. I will definitely have to venture back to this restaurant.

As Italian places go, I think I was supposed to be more impressed than I was. Mind you, there was a lot about our meal for 7 that was perfectly decent. The bolognese sauce was quite good, as were the calamari and the fried lasagna appetizers. The side Caesar salad was large and nicely garlicky.
But there were any number of elements that dragged the experience down. Three in particular.
1. Our group of 7 was seated at three small mismatched tables (one of them round) pushed together. Credit for being able to do it when the group walked in without a reservation (not my idea), but it still made seating and maneuvering stuff around the tabletop awkward.
2. The service was out of sync. Appetizers came out in a staggered fashion. The two of us who got salads received them all of two minutes before the entrees arrived. And granted that timing pasta and fish dishes with a pizza isn’t trivial, the very long lag between the first two arriving as entrees and the last was annoying.
There was also a lack of coordination between our waitress and the dessert waiter — both took orders, and didn’t seem to know that the other was doing their thing (though, to be fair, our orders were all eventually put in correctly).
I had to ask for cream for my sugar.
Dirty dish clearing was slow (which made the table arrangement even worse).
The dessert cakes were served with spoons, which seemed odd.
3. While most of the food was good, the two cakes ordered by the table — red velvet and a «hummingbird» spice cake — were both dried out. I had the hummingbird, and it simply felt as though it had been in the fridge for too long — which is a shame, because besides that the cream cheese frosting and the cake itself were quite tasty. The other who had red velvet cake had the same complaint.
Would I go back? Sure, if the group I was in wanted to. But given a choice, there are a lot of other places in Old Pasadena I’d want to go to first.

**2.5 stars**
I came here for lunch one time with my sister and her best friend. It looked like a nice little restaurant in Pasadena so we decided to give it a try.
Service: The service was… ehh. I mean there was only about 10 people in the restaurant, but at the time we were all younger and we didn’t look like we belong on that type of restaurant BUT regardless we were still paying customers and should have been treated as so!
Food:
Rosemary bread: Complimentary rosemary bread with onions and butter come out to the table. They have EVOO and balsamic vinegar to dip the bread in and was pretty darn tasty! 3.5 stars
Cajun jambalaya (spicy): $ 14. Shrimp, chicken and sausage served in a light tomato garlic cream sauce. It says «spicy» in the title, but it’s far from spicy! It’s as mild as you can possibly make something. Absolutely no spice to it at all! In my opinion, it was quite bland. The sauce needed much more seasoning even if it’s just some simple salt and pepper. 2.5 stars
The actual restaurant has a very nice ambiance, but as far the the service and food that I received. well, lets just say I won’t be back for a very long time, unless the service and food dramatically improved.

I came here last night with a group of 7 people to celebrate a friend’s birthday. I was instantly disappointed by the service. We made an appointment, and upon arrival they decided that it was finally time to set up a table for us. So after 15 minutes of standing awkwardly at the host table, where we were pushed around by waiters, other guests, and the host, we were finally seated. Why would you not set up a table in preparation for a reservation?
The food itself was about average, in my opinion. Nowhere on the level that deserves a claim of «top 10 Italian restaurants in LA». The focaccia bread was quite good, although cold to a little warm, and their dishes tasted okay. I ordered the chicken marsala, which had a pretty decent flavor. The vegetables could’ve been better cooked and seasoned however, the broccoli pieces I had were cold and tasted raw. Their food presentation could be worked on as well.
The waitress initially appeared friendly, although not very considerate. She interrupted our conversations, but maintained a smile for the most part. As it was a celebration for my friend’s birthday, I asked the waiter if they offered anything (since I saw on here that many people mentioned they got free desserts in the past). She was also reminded when checking the IDs of the people on our table, noting — «Oh! Your birthday was just yesterday! Happy birthday!» When it came time for dessert, however, she forgot and simply handed us the bill. My other friend reminded her, to which she responded with great uncertainty and confusion — «Oh… Hm… Okay…» and so on. She literally stood there for a minute, unsure of what to do and just stared at my friend confused. What happened between now and before? If you agreed to it before, just admit your mistake of forgetting and go!
Upon paying the bill, we also asked for a parking validation. Prior to arriving, we called to inquire about parking, which they responded with a specific lot that they would validate for. They don’t validate, apparently. I really don’t get why you would claim to validate… and then not.
At the end of the night, the only good thing about this place is their fair prices for their portions on okay food. Their service REALLY disappointed me and my friends.