Ciao Pasta Bar - Windsor

Good fresh ingredients, good friendly service. No major complaints except I recommend more fresh bread as an appetizer.

Had a very dear family members 70th bday here.What a mistake!There were 12 of us. We had a reservation for 5pm. The owner was not friendly at all. Barely looked our way. Took over a half hour for our appetizers. Calamari was over priced and under cooked. Portions were smaller than other restaurants. When we ordered our meals one of my nephews asked how big the platter of pasta was versus the full order. He was told the platter was a bigger bowl. Well....they were right....it is a bigger BOWL....NOT a bigger portion! Same amount of pasta, half full bowl. We couldn't get the waitresses attention when we needed anything, At one point my sister in law got up to find someone and found the owner crouched behind the bar on her cell phone!!!! And this was while we were waiting for our coffees which had been sitting on the bar for over ten minutes while the other waitresses just walked by them. We actually had to get up and get our coffee ourselves!!! They brought out the cake we bought from them but no knife to cut it, no forks to eat it and no plates to put it on. Nor did they acknowledge the bday celebration. Not one single kind word came from any person working there. We finally finished at 8:30! Slowest service of any restaurant I have ever been to! So to sum it up....NOT friendly at all!SLOW, SLOW, SLOW.EXPENSIVE!!! The "special" was $35!And the food was absolutely nothing special.I recommend ANY other restaurant.

It's funny how sometimes you remember a visit somewhere fondly and would be willing to say it was a great place, but it's perhaps because of the company you were in, rather than that of actual greatness of the place! We were a small group and I don't know that anyone from the table would have said that from beginning to end they enjoyed everything they chose. It was a long-ish evening, but because we were a group I wasn't bothered by the amount of time it took for everything to come to us it was nice having the time to relax and chit chat. I was not impressed by the drink I selected, although it was considered a "specialty" it was just lacking in the robustness the menu and waitress suggested it would have. The service was very good, always attentive, friendly. The pasta I chose was excellent, and although by the end I was stuffed when I initially saw the portion I thought my two year old would have inhaled it in three solid bites and said where's the rest! I was not impressed by the apparent "nickel and dining" game they have going on with the pasta bar, you pay for every little thing, including sauce! You're not going into an Italian Pasta Bar and eating plain pasta with oil and cheese! Would have been nice to see some tastier, fuller Italian bread for the table. Maybe a small salad with your pasta. The rest of the orders appeared to be a bit dodgey, one being good, another not so much. With all the options in Windsor, I don't think the pasta bar will be screaming my name any time soon.

The create your own pasta (home made) with many options is really cool. The calamari presentation is like none we have seen. And we have had hundreds of orders. Like a blooming onion and all one squid. I suppose we could have gotten a lemon or some tomato sauce to dip in. But we ate it with the balsamic. I am personally not crazy about balsamic, but my wife loved it.The service was excellent. My wife had linguini, with asparagus, Four different sauce choices. We chose bolognese. Very tasty but a lighter sauce would probably been better. I had the gnocchi stuffed with sweet potato in the bolognese with diced eggplant.The sauce is hearty. They have a lighter version of bolognese. Again I would have liked to have tried one of the other sauces.We has oso bucco and meatballs on the side. The oso bucco was very tasty. But I believe it was beef shank not veal. However, it was yummy.In addition to calamari which we order everywhere, I usually get an order of the meatballs on side as My own are the gold standard. The meatballs were very good when eaten with the sauce. But a bit plain if eaten alone.I missed a quality bread with the meal. The thin toasted slices with the balsamic dip would have been fine it it were with olive oil/pesto. But again I am not a balsamic fan.The house chianti was worth the price for a half carafe. House wine is house wine,Desserts looked very good, But we were stuffed so passed on them,Adequate public parking behind restauarants $2 canadian after 6 pm is all it costs.

A group of 6 of us met for dinner on a Saturday night at 730pm and our meal ended up taking well over 2 hours because of how slow the appetizers and food came out. It was uncomfortable to sit so long in hard wooden chairs. Our waitress was very friendly, knowledgeable, and helpful though. The appetizer quality was all over the place.The calamari was chewy, our friend did not finish the steak focaccia, the focaccia for the table was nothing special (didn't taste very fresh), my beet and pear salad was ok but puzzlingly, didn't have any pears and was over priced, however my husband's minestrone soup was among the best we've ever tasted. I've never been to a pasta bar before, where you pick exactly what you want in your pasta dish, but you get charged for every item. My husband and I split a platter of gnocchi, and we each found the portion to be kinda small, especially for the price. The gnocchi was fantastic, perfectly tender, great texture and flavor. We were pleased with the sauce and toppings we chose - spicy arabiatta sauce definitely had some kick, with panchetta, mushrooms, asparagus, and artichokes in the sauce. Wish they had been more generous with the amount of toppings in our serving though. The apps took about an hour to come out, and the main course came out about another 30 minutes after that. Glad we didn't pay for meter parking, or we would have had to run out of the restaurant to put more money in the meters. Bottom line, we probably won't be returning.