The Spaghetti House, West End

Gnocchi in butter sauce and pappardelle ragu

A few weeks ago, my partner and I tried The Spaghetti House at West End, Brisbane. My partner is a huuuge lover of Italian food, so you can expect many of my reviews to be of Italian restaurants. The venue is quite small; the inside area is very narrow and other than that, there are just a few tables outside on the footpath. We made a booking for 8pm, and even by then people were still coming and going, the place was packed! We were shown to our table, which unfortunately was right in front of the kitchen. We had a lovely waiter who was very very Italian (he had a thick accent that we sometimes found hard to understand). He seemed to know the menu very well, and easily rattled off about eight different types of pizza that were the special of the night. We ordered a small potato and rosemary pizza for entree, I ordered pappardelle ragu and my partner ordered some sort of gnocchi in butter sauce. For dessert I ordered tiramisu and my partner ordered panna cotta with berry coulis.

Panna cotta with berry coulis and tiramisu

Entree was nice, but a little bland (I guess we should have expected that from a potato and rosemary pizza though). My main was beautiful; the meat was so tender it just fell apart, the tomatoey sauce was delicious and the pasta was fresh and lovely. My partner was not as impressed with his main, the butter sauce definitely needed something added to give a little more flavour. The gnocchi was okay, but quickly to be surpassed by the gnocchi at Majo's Casual Italian Dining. Dessert was a great experience - we both loved our choices. I had expected the tiramisu to be served as a cake (due to past experiences), so I ordered a scoop of chocolate gelato to go with it. On the menu, gelato was served in portions of three scoops, so I asked our waiter if I could order just one scoop with my dessert. He was very accommodating, and when the desserts were brought to our table, he told us that he had included the gelato free of charge - how lovely! We were very thankful, and dug into our delicious treats enthusiastically.  Both were a delight and a great way to finish the meal. On our way out, my partner tipped our lovely waiter. All up, one entree, two mains, two desserts and two drinks cost us around $90. We will go back someday, but we have plenty of places to try before that. I do recommend this restaurant, and especially recommend the ragu, tiramisu, gelato and panna cotta.