This is a story of one day and two pastas. You might think it’s fiction, which would be understandable since I do write a lot of fiction. But this story is totally, completely, one hundred percent fact. In fact, it happened just Saturday.
We were spending the weekend in Quebec City, which is really a very beautiful place. If you ever get the chance to go, I highly recommend it. But we were out exploring, which is stressful for me because I prefer to have done the research and have a solid plan in place before engaging in spontaneity. It was almost lunchtime and we had no plans whatsoever, other than finding a restaurant.
The night before we had partaken in the longest dinner ever. It was three courses, so I expected it would be somewhat lengthy, but we literally sat there for a solid hour before they gave us a single bite of food. And—to make things worse, we had two extra people at our table that I didn’t know!
To be fair, they were very nice, and I certainly got the chance to know them over the course of the three-hour dinner, but as a hardcore introvert, it was challenging, at least at first.
There was this one point where the conversation had died and I was sitting there thinking to myself, Don’t talk about Fat Bear Week. But before I could stop myself, I found I had opened up my mouth and said, “So, do you all follow Fat Bear Week?”
They did not follow Fat Bear Week, but they sounded interested, especially once I showed them a picture of 747, the 2023 champion. I hear he’s already emerged from hibernation, and he’s still fat!
So anyway. I’m telling you the tale of two pastas, not the tale of the neverending dinner. It was Saturday afternoon and we were hungry and in need of sustenance. We wandered into a restaurant, which didn’t have a menu posted outside, which made me nervous, because what if it was $400 a plate and all they served was rabbit? What if they only spoke French?
I can say Je voudrais une salade, but after that, I’m pretty much out.
But they spoke English and had entrees for under $20, so that seemed fine. I’m a vegetarian, so I always have limited choices when dining out, but they had a few pasta dishes that were meatless, so I just went for a nice puttanesca pasta, since that seemed to have the most vegetables and I love vegetables so much.
And this pasta was incredible. It had olives, capers, artichokes, Calabrian peppers, eggplant, and more! It had so much flavor and so much going on. A very strong pasta, so to speak. I liked it. It turned out the restaurant had only opened two days ago, so that was kind of funny. I hope they do well!
Later, at dinner, we had reservations at Chez Jules, which turned out to also have pasta as the vegetarian option. I often prefer not to have the same thing for lunch and dinner, but I also don’t eat meat and don’t want to inconvenience the group with my dietary preferences.
So at dinner, I ordered the tagliatelles au pestou, because I like pesto, so why not. But here’s the interesting part—the pasta was bland! There was very little going on other than noodles. Good noodles, but still. Noodles. It was kind of like sophisticated butter noodles for adults.
And I thought to myself, if I could have mixed the two pastas, it probably would have been perfect. Just the right amount of flavor! But of the two, I prefer the puttanesca. And that’s really the moral of the Tale of Two Pastas. It’s better to have too much flavor than not enough.
Also, if you’re interested, I often let an AI generate my blog images, but this one features an actual photo of the puttanesca pasta. If you’re interested.
And thus concludes The Tale of Two Pastas.
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