My experience with Italian food is severely limited to Anton’s and HK-style spaghetti. So when the co-op student at my office was having her farewell lunch I was happy to hear that it would be at Al Porto.
At lunch time, Al Porto has a really good lunch deal where you can get a soup of the day, a ceasar salad and your choice of pasta or risotto (the ones indicated with an * are $18.95) for $15.95 or with pizza ($16.95).
The bread they served at the beginning was delicious! They had a warm focaccia served with balsamic vinegar and olive oil dip.
What we ate: Ceasar Salad and Soup of the Day
The soup of the day was a lentil soup and surprisingly I really liked this! It was like a chicken noodle soup with lentils. It was definitely on the saltier side.
This ceasar salad is one of the best I’ve ever had. The dressing was authentic with anchovies and egg. It was so good, I would definitely get the full size next time!
What we ate: Seafood Risotto – prawns, mussels, calms, scallops, salmon, halibut
This was A’s order and she felt that it was pretty salty. She also noted that one of the mussels in her dish was cold, but she had already eaten it so hopefully she won’t get sick tonight!
What we ate: Linguine Pescatore – prawns, mussels, clams, scallops, salmon, halibut, tomato sauce
This is what I ordered and I agree with A in that it was very salty. And there was only one scallop. I know this is probably blasphemous but I actually prefer the version at Anton’s better. The noodles here tasted like they came straight out of a box.
What we ate: Penne Salsiccia – Italian sausage, sun-dried tomato, chili pepper, tomato sauce
This was what S ordered and seeing as she devoured it I can only assume that it was delicious!
Would I come back? Probably not. The pasta here just wasn’t that great, but for a Downtown lunch it’s a pretty good deal. The service here was very good, but seeing as there was only a few tables and the number of servers to patrons was almost one to one it wasn’t surprising.