Pastalozzi - Hamburg

Unbeatable, this place. you walk in and feel as if you were in Little Italy in New York in the 70s. Wooden decos, tables, original old-fashioned floor and no-English speaking personnel. Well, what the hell. The food is more than gorgeous, even if you have to fight through the linguistic issues. Feels lile Mamma is serving you personnaly, for those who've been in Little Italy at the above mentioned period of time. A must go.

My roommate loves pasta and she wanted to come along to my last nice dinner with my boyfriend who was visiting for the weekend, so of course I took her recommendation but na klar did not take her along. Ordered the creamy salmon pasta nice saltiness, perfectly fatty sauce with generous chunks of cooked salmon wrapped inside the noodles. Partner got the simple tomato sauce pasta it was a bit on the plain side and a bit too salty, particularly with extra Parmesan. The Parmesan in itself was a highlight though this cute, bright grater that looked like a children's toy was filled to the brim with real Parmesan AND left at our table so we could indulge ad hoc in Parma heaven. We also had some house wine, which was very generous for the price, and the setting was also very cute I had some doubts about the location, right next to Landungsbrücke, but Pastalozzi is off on a side street and we were the only ones sitting at a dimly lit, dark oak table in the back. Also candles! What romance! Parmagnificent.

We were surprised how rude the owner was. He didn't respond or react to our requests. He showed us our table without looking at us and provided a very rude impression. The soup was extremely salty but got changed and was better afterwards. The nice thing that I connect with this restaurant was my girlfriend sitting and smiling adjacent me.

Having visited the harbour, Landungsbrücken quay and the ElbeTunnell we strolled along to the Portuguese Quarter which is centered around Ditmar-Koel-Straße in the Neustadt district. There are a lot of southern European type restaurants and bars and we found one on in Pastalozzi. In fact we visited twice. There were four of us, two adults, a student and a child. The ambiance is good and the place is clean and comfortable with some nice nooks and cranny's to accommodate diners. We ordered two pizza's, Tortellini and one of the specials Spaghetti Scampi. The pizza's were paper thin, perfectly cooked and very tasty. Tortellini and Spaghetti was also cooked to our liking. The Tortellini had a very nice sauce with it while there was a good portion of prawn in the scampi. We had water, wine and some soft drinks to accompany. All in all the food was good and not too expensive. This restaurant does not take card. Out waiter had good English and he was both jovial and efficient. Being our first day in Hamburg the pleasant experience was a great welcome to the city.We liked this restaurant so much we visited again on the last night but were met by a different staff member who from our first experience we had identified as either the owner or the manager, This man wad not as pleasant and did not have English. Dont get this wrong - we do not expect every one we meet on a foreign trip to have perfect English but we would like them to at least try to be cordial. We assume he told us the restaurant was full from his hand gestures and there being ample alternatives in this area we left. It's a pity given the experience of the first visit I have to be anyway negative about this place but just reporting on our experience.

From the first moment on we were surprised about the behaviour of the waiters, one of them was even the owner, we gathered! It took them a while to take our order and we had to order the drinks and food at different people! Why that is, we don't know...afterwards had our dinner, we got completely ignored and not served anything else. Had to pay at the counter at a very grumpy owner! Absolutely shocking service and quiet a shame...it's not exactly the cheapest place! Not recommended to spend a nice evening.