The Pasta Shoppe

I have visited the Pasta Shoppe a few times now with my family. By far my favorites are the featured pasta specials on any given evening. They have never been a disappoint. The overall menu selections are very adequate for any taste or mood. I tried the pizza on my last visit. It was good, but as stated earlier, I’m a fan of the featured pasta. Overall, The Pasta Shoppe is a very nice place to stop in for a nice well prepared meal. Cheers.

Skip it. The pasta is tasteless and nothing you can’t make at home. The sauces are runny and watery; both the alfredo and the marinara. The ravioli I ordered was spinach and artichoke, but the only hint I knew they served me the correct dish was the color of the filling. My best guess would have been normal, plain cheese ravioli. I am not sure how they were able to soak the garlic bread in so much butter, yet it was hard and crumbly; a feat I don’t think I could accomplish at home, but it was very unappetizing, unless you like eating butter soaked, hard bread.
There are breadsticks (hard, packaged ones) on the table to snack on before your food comes, but the table we were at had opened, empty packages. Someone didn’t clear and check the able from the last guest, but I have to guess this happens often.
The atmosphere is cheap and tacky and the prices are too high for the quality of food you are getting. Go across the street and find another restaurant in Port Washington, there are much better options for the price you pay here. Service was slow and un-​attentive (e.g. empty glasses and plates sat for more than a few minutes and the place was not busy).
The table next to us ordered the canoli, they looked like they’d come out of a freezer and thawed on the plate, the color was bland and the chocolate chips looked old. Based on our visit I’d say everything comes from that freezer!

My family and I had a very disappointing experience here. We all live in different states so we hardly see each other so time together is important. Dinner was made awkward when they brought out the wrong meal for my niece and then questioning us about how many garlic breads we had. Very weird. Also ordered soup and no bread or crackers came with. We were charged $ 3.00 for 2 pieces of garlic bread when we asked for 2 more because the kids meals didn’t come with any bread. Just overall rude service. When we voiced our concerns all we got in return were lame excuses. No apology until we were out of the door. Food was mediocre so even if the service was good I still would never return. A dining experience has to be pretty bad for me to give it a bad review like this as I am in the service industry myself. I really didn’t appreciate having our main focus being on how bad we were treated instead of on fun family things. So thanks for nothing.

Delicious, excellent service, and well managed. Generous portions for a great price. Very authentic. Nothing else to say other than its PERFECT.

This was short trip to port Washington I always love Italian food so we tried this one and I just love the food specially French fried egg plant and homemade lasagna and pizza. Whatever I ate was tasty delicious. Good for family and kids.

Solid choice for Port Washington. Went here with the family, we all enjoyed our time. Charming place for sure. Will be back.

Nice atmosphere friendly staff. Food was good not outstanding but good. Will visit again.

Great family atmosphere. Simple Italian food, tasty garlic bread. The salads are too basic for me lacking in quality but the pizza and pasta entrees are very good. Fun place, reasonable and consistently good.

As far as their pizzas are concerned… Cheese, real and delicious. Meats, very good and tasty. Sauce, average but doesn’t need to be more. Crust, a bit hard around the edges, but decent. The only thing I’m concerned about is mushrooms on pizza. Are they canned? If not, they need some help, because they’re tasteless wastes of rubbery space on my pie.

I’ve driven by the Pasta Shoppe many times, and was always intrigued by the attractive façade and huge red tomato over the door. I rarely stay in Port long enough to go out to dinner, but on a recent occasion we were there for the weekend and decided to visit.
The inside was as charming as the outside, and the menu held promise. Pasta primavera was featured on the otherwise vegetarian-​unfriendly menu, and my wife found an interesting chicken dish among the daily specials. Their claim to 40 years in the restaurant business was also reassuring.
Primavera is one of my favorite pasta meals. The traditional and almost universal recipe features a good amount of fresh and lightly cooked vegetables piled on fettuccine or similar pasta, lightly tossed with olive oil and garlic, with a Parmesan finish. Hard to go wrong when you follow the recipe.
I was quite surprised when presented with a plate bearing more than a cup of rather cloying red sauce poured over limp pasta, with a scattering of vegetables on the top. When I say ‘scattering,’ I mean maybe 8 1″ broccoli and cauliflower florets and a couple snow peas. I had more vegetables in my omelet at Harry’s, the nest morning.
If the pasta was firm, if the sauce had character and the vegetables substance, this would pass as an «Italian-​style» dish at Perkins. It might even make the menu at Olive Garden. But calling this Primavera at a true Italian restaurant is a cruel misstatement.
My wife’s meal was a large soup bowl with another huge helping of the red sauce, poured over some flavorless gluten-​free pasta,. There were a few pieces of overworked chicken in the sauce, and maybe four artichoke hearts. If there were more, it was not worth the exploration. The gluten-​free pasta was also an additional $ 2, which our waitress had failed to point out.
When I spoke to the owner (not the manager — the owner), her only offer was to prepare new meals for us. I can imagine if there was a one-​off fault in the dish this might be a fair response. But when both meals are fundamentally flawed from their conception, I do not hold out hope for much else on the menu. And there is very, very little available for vegetarians (outside of pizza, I suppose).
I do not understand the mindset of a restauranteur who will only fight with a customer. We were profoundly dissatisfied with our meals, with good reason, and the prospect of more of the same was not at all attractive. After I mentioned Unilocal,she reluctantly allowed about half off the entries, since, she claimed, we had eaten half of the unappetizing dishes. There’s all kinds of ways to do that math, I guess.
A weak 2 stars for the food, less one for the uncongenial host.

I can’t believe all the negative reviews! We’ve lived in Port 12 years, visit pretty regularly and have never had a bad meal. The antipasto, fried eggplant sticks, pizza and tortellini (mix the red and white sauce) are always fabulous! They have the best homemade marinara! The atmosphere is also nice and we always enjoy a carafe of the house Chianti.

I’ve eaten here two times and have not been disappointed. It’s a neat place, you can have dinner with the hubby and it’ll feel intimate or with a group of friends and not feel like you are ruining someones first date. The food is unbelievable and servings are very generous. The staff is friendly and polite and ready to offer suggestions. Prices are on the higher side but worth it as a special treat.

A place called the Pasta Shoppe ought not use frozen pasta, me thinks! We parked in the back, and saw the boxes from frozen pasta in the dumpster. The antipasto salad was drowned in a decent vinaigrette, and the gluten-​free pizza dough tasted stale as though it, too, was previously frozen. We had been looking forward to a decent meal, and were sadly disappointed.

Room for improvement

Been here several times and its always the same. I’ll give them high marks for consistency, but it ends there. The food is mediocre and the service is subpar. Example, if you want water, each person at the table must ask for it. Apparently the tap water bills are high in port washington. Once you get some water, expect long wait to order.

Great food, great atmosphere, and one of the best sauces I have ever had!

Been going to the Pasta Shoppe for years. The antipasto salad is fantastic and very large. The garlic bread is very good but I would agree with some of the other posts that it could be more garlicy.
Entrée’s are great and the pizza is one of the best. The «special» is a great combination with just enough onions but not overpowering. The sausage used for the pizza is maybe the best I’ve had.

We had a pretty nice server who was polite and funny. Awesome!
They have a wide variety of wine and a full bar. Awesome!
The place is really clean, so that’s cool too.
So far so good. Then, the food comes out. Each entrée comes with a side of garlic bread, which should be called butter bread. It is dripping in butter and not very garlic-​y. I went with the cheese tortellini for my entrée and the noodles were overcooked. Gross. The sauce they use is nothing to write home about. All in all I was not very impressed and kept thinking, I could have made this at home, and better.

I had high expectations for this place because it came so highly recommended from a long time resident of Port Washington. Our visit was, without a doubt, one of the worst (if not THE worst) dining experiences I have ever had, and I eat out at least 500 meals per year all over the US. The service was terrible. We were treated like second rate citizens from the moment we walked in.
An example was when we ordered the bruschetta appetizer, we never received it. When the server brought out our entrees, I mentioned it, and she said that they had run out of it (how an italian place runs out of that, I’ll never know. Okay fine… until a few minutes later, we overheard the table next to us order it and (surprise) they brought it right out. This was just one of about 5 separate things that occurred during the meal.
The food was average, and could not make up for the terrible experience. Overall, the food was average to below average for italian. The most egregious error was overcooked pasta… in an italian restaurant. What a sin!

My husband and I are on the hunt for Wisconsin’s best mozzarella sticks, and to date The Pasta Shoppe is our winner! The breading is crispy, the cheese is always melted and not to greasy. The sauce is really what makes it though!
We also usually share an Antipasto Salad which is perfect for two, and then finish with the cheese ravioli. It comes with verrry buttery garlic bread perfect for dipping in the great sauce.
The prices are average for an italian place, but the food is worth it. It’s owned by a local family and their pride in the place really shines through. I also have their facebook fan page added and they always run great specials!