Grade: B+
Downtown Phoenix is not known for its nightlife, and a stroll around the city after 9:00 p.m. quickly shows why: nothing is open.
While bars and fast-food joints may satisfy some, a college student who hasn’t eaten anything but bananas and animal crackers since dinner the night before needs something more meaningful in their stomach before they have to think about starting homework.
Enter Pasta Bar.
Nestled behind Sens, between North First and Second streets on East McKinley Street, Pasta Bar is awake when everyone in Phoenix sleeps soundly. Everyone, that is, except for you and your friends, who have watched helplessly as cafeterias close and restaurants turn off their lights.
Any restaurant open until 2:00 a.m. on weekdays is something worth knowing about, but what’s almost as good as that is the fact that it serves, wait for it, pasta!
It’s hard to go wrong with pasta, but, just in case, all of Pasta Bar’s noodles are handmade. Their menu, which features both traditional and modernized pasta variations, is not bogged down by unnecessary complexity—the distinctive ingredients of their nine main pasta dishes are listed right in front of you.
While the price of a meal there is not exactly a bargain as far as pasta goes, with entrees costing an average of $13, the food is honest and flavorful. The dishes may not be brilliant in their conception, but they’re not at all bad—and for a late-night, sit-down restaurant that’s a three-minute walk away from the downtown campus, that’s more than enough to satisfy me.
Contact the reporter at dneligh@gmail.com
