We Had A Great Time And This Is What We Ate

Notes about Pasta Genova by Annie Clifford

Last Thursday, Tilser and I hopped on the 2:30 train to Ottawa.  It was a weirdly balmy day, and we were wearing tshirts on the platform tanning and watching a lady smoke.  Fortunately, we had lunch from Pasta Genova.  It’s the little place with the red awning on Wellington Street north of Queen, next to the wicker furniture importer.  You’ve probably seen older, educated-left-wing looking Kingstoners going in there.  That’s because they’re smart, and have figured out that Pasta Genova is one of the most delicious things going around here.

Appetizers

We started our takeout train platform lunch (there’s no sitting down at Pasta Genova, unless you’re one of the dozen or so rather merry looking and probably related people working there) with a dish of olives.  When I got them, the woman mentioned only that they’re black, and marinated in balsamic vinegar.  Great, I thought.  What she didn’t mention is that they’re also marinated with rosemary, thyme, and almost as much garlic as olives, and taste good enough that I’m drooling slightly thinking about it.  Also, when we got to Ottawa and shared our few remaining olives with our hosts, they quickly asked if we could bring more back at Christmas, in much larger quantities.

Washing down our garlicky olives, we drank Orangina and that strange bitter Chinoto stuff.  Orangina is great–it’s really fizzy water with a bit of orange juice, but there’s also mandarin and lemon essences in it, which is why it’s better than fizzy water mixed with orange juice that you can make at home.  It also comes in these odd round bottles.  Like Chinoto, it’s not that sweet, so you can pretend it’s a gourmet (therefore practically health food) item, even though it’s soda pop, and if your mum has common sense, she doesn’t want you drinking it.

Sandwitch Course

Next was the sandwich course.  We had two versions of the “vegetarian” sandwich, the provolone and the Swiss.  The damn things are so big we couldn’t try the Swiss one until hours later.  Made on slices of Pasta Genova’s focaccia bread (two inches thick, as big as your face, and covered in olive oil and salt chunks–the focaccia bread is made several times a day, costs less than a dollar, and tastes like Italian heaven), the sandwiches are cut into two massive halves.  I suppose it’s a good place for a date that way, although there’s no chance you can watch the garlic.  They feature the chosen cheese–I preferred the Swiss, a piece of extremely crunchy lettuce, and this rather incredible pickled vegetable concoction  that seems to include normal pickled Italian things like eggplant, more garlic, artichokes, fa fa fa, and also picked carrots.  Delicious.

I want to mention two things here.  First, that I’d had these sandwiches before, and knew to ask for NO MUSTARD.  That’s very important.  The mustard flavour and the picked vegetable flavour are terrible together–make sure to specify no mustard, even if they don’t ask, or you may be terribly disappointed.  Second, if you’re not vegetarian, Italians do lovely things to meat, and there are several marvellous meat options to choose from–like the Parma ham, which is very thin, translucent gold slices of ham from Parma, a great city for food.  I think it was where the slow food movement started.  Maartje says that Parma ham is so recognized throughout Europe for its extreme deliciousness that hogs from the Netherlands are sent to Parma to be slaughtered, hammed, and returned to Holland.  Coming from the Dutch (a culture of tasty meats), that’s saying a lot.  Interestingly, Parma has become quite wealthy because of their food-related business interests: Parmalat milk and Italpasta are both based there.  And yet it’s a bastion of Communist sentiment, and still has an active (though very wealthy) Communist Party.  My sister lived there in 2003, and would go watch the Communist party members walk around the plaza, wearing fur coats and carrying small dogs.

Sides

There’s other tasty things in Pasta Genova that you can browse around in while the nice person makes a sandwich for you (they’re all made fresh to order–don’t forget about the mustard).  Some things I got were bocconcini cheese, which is small, immature mozzarellas that are good for things like salads and flavourful pasta dishes (they also have homemade pasta there, which is great, and quite reasonably priced).  And I got some arugula, which I was excited about–here it is November, and there’s local arugula still around!  However, two days later, it’s getting a bit slimy.  Adam Stutt says it’s because someone out there is really pushing the crop:  greens melt quickly when they’ve been burned by frost, which is when they’re bruised by freezing and thawing while in the ground.  Once they’re bruised, greens decay quickly.  However, Adam also says Pasta Genova is cool, and the focaccia is amazing.  I figure if you use the arugula fast, it’ll be fine (although it isn’t as nearly as flavourful as the summertime stuff).  There’s also huge portobello mushrooms and local tomatoes, pesto, truffle oil, and various noodle sauces.  So you can conveniently arrange a fine dinner in the time it takes to make a sandwich, and then whoever you live with might not be so jealous when you describe your lunch to them.

Dessert

Being rather stuffed after our sandwich course, Tilser and I were glad the Pasta Genova dessert takeout options are rather little in size.  Actually, that’s not quite true.  They have cannoli there, which is a hard, sweet pastry shell filled with sweetened mascarpone cheese, and maybe a little chocolate, and which people say are quite perfect as a dessert.  But I don’t really like sugar, and the one time I tried one several years ago, that’s what I thought it tasted like.  So we had teeny tiny Toblerone bars.  There’s a theme of little things at Pasta Genova: single size espresso makers, delicate jars of fancy olive oil and vinegar, very small dried fish.  There’s also small servings of nougat, but only lemon and orange flavours, which are apparently authentically Italian and I probably should’ve tried for the purposes of this column, but I thought they sounded a little strange.  Trevor Brown recommends the anise candies, and was going to give me one of his as we left, but we forgot, and I was late for the train and didn’t have time to go back.

Well, that concludes the meal.  Tilser and I agree: it was great.  Five stars. Then we had a nap.