No. 31, Minquan St, Xinxing Dist
高雄市新興區民權街31號
(07)226-9636
Monday-Sunday
11:30am-1:30pm
5:30pm-8:30pm
English friendly: yes
vegetarian friendly: yes
average cost: 200-300NTD
I'm a little reluctant to review this restaurant, because it means admitting that I was wrong... Good Italian food does exist in Kaohsiung. It does. It really, really does.
You'll have to work to get it though. Grandma Pasta House is open for very short periods of time each day, and you'll probably need a reservation to secure seats. We went at 7:00pm on a Monday without a reservation, and lucked out, but you're still advised to plan ahead.
It's quite a cozy little place. The inside is all decorated with actual art from actual Western countries, and that night's music playlist was in very good taste. Even though there were lots of other people eating that night, the ambience enveloped me like a happy Western cloud.
Rumor has it the owner of this restaurant is a Taiwanese person who spent time in Italy. I believe it, based on the menu alone. It's not one of those Taiwanese Italian monstrosities with a thousand nearly identical choices of topping and sauce for you to mix-and-match with the pasta of your choice. All the dishes have been carefully thought out, and are prepared from scratch. They even have specials that change with the day/season.
I only took a picture of part of the menu, but rest assured the rest of it is just as alluring. It's not too big, either--but you'll still have trouble deciding.
For an extra 80NTD you get bread/salad and a soup. (And for an extra 120NTD they'll throw in one of their appetizers as well!) The bread comes topped with "shrimp paste" and looks a little suspect but was actually really, really good. It was actual Western bread: crispy, airy, yeasty, and no slightly sweet aftertaste.
The soup of the day was neither corn soup NOR pumpkin soup!!! An actual different kind of soup! Indeed it was cauliflower soup, and it was delicious. Creamy and satisfying, but not too rich.
The pitcher's worth of free drink, which you can see in the upper right corner there, was also delicious! I think it was some sort of iced tea with honey or something. Either way it was completely addictive and I had like four cups. If you do the same, you can get a second pitcher for the low low price of 10NTD!
Here we have fettuccini in tomato sauce, with sirloin steak and vegetables. Take a look at that sauce and you can tell it was prepared fresh, not poured out of a can. I thought the noodles in themselves were not super spectacular, but they had at least been cooked well. Meanwhile the sauce was amazing, and the beef possibly even more amazing.
After an arduous decision making process, I decided on the spaghetti in pesto sauce with shrimp and hot peppers. You can see the peppers in front there, but I couldn't taste them. Not one bit! I'm sort of used to that by now though.
It took me so long to decide in part because the waitress kept telling me that my selections "didn't have any sauce" and Was I Okay With That. I persisted in the end, and got this. I guess Taiwanese people don't consider the above to be sauce. Well whatever it was, it was GREAT. It absolutely made the dish: cheesy, salty, pesto-y... perfect. The noodles were ever so slightly undercooked, and the shrimp were not the most awesome shrimp I've ever had (though they came deshelled which was nice), but whatever I don't even care. This meal made me. So happy.
An extra 80NTD also gets you an after-dinner drink, so I chose lemon and pomelo tea. In retrospect it was a pretty odd choice on my part, since I don't usually like either of those fruits... But it was great! The pomelo came in sweet marmalade form at the bottom of the cup, balancing out the sour from the lemon. I finished it all, even though I'd already had like seven cups of free iced tea.
In conclusion, I am overjoyed to admit that this restaurant SHATTERED my expectations. I can't wait to take everyone I know here, and show them how real Italian food is supposed to taste.
OVERALL RATING: 5/5
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