Pasta Moto - Italian, Novato

5800 Nave Drive, Unit C
Novato, CA 94949
(415) 883-6686
Parking: shopping center parking lot
http://www.pastamoto.com/

Last Visited: January 9, 2010

Food: 3 to 4 stars
Atmosphere: 3 stars
Service: 4 stars
Price: $$

Located in the new Hamilton Shopping Center in Novato, Pasta Moto serves made-to-order fast food including paninis, salads, pizzas, and pastas, with some ingredients being imported from Italy. This isn't the first Pasta Moto though - one was opened in San Francisco at the Westfield shopping center four years ago.

Walking into the establishment, it's a bit of an unusual setup in that you walk into an area with many tables and the counter/kitchen area behind those tables are where you order (although that's not the unusual part) and to the right of the tables is a walled section with a combination of high-backed bar stools and tables near the cushioned bench. Within this section is their unique wine dispenser - it's like a vending machine that takes cards allowing wine to be dispensed in various ounced portions. You could either choose all of one wine or do your own tasting. I didn't try it, but the concept is interesting. My friend recently found one of these dispensers while eating in Hong Kong at a fancy bar, so they're around if you look for them. The rear of the restaurant has a self-service counter containing the soda dispenser, utensils, napkins, and pitchers of water with mint floating in them.

After ordering, you receive a card that they have pre-programmed and after you select a table, you plug the card into what looks like a tiny jukebox to register your location. That's how they know what table to bring the order to. It's probably a lot of fun to do this with a kid and explain how it works.

The menu had a fair number of options, so I wanted to try at least one pizza and one pasta.

- Gnocchi Pesto - Served on a plate with a triangular-shaped well in it, the dish seems to have an artistic flare. Topped with grated parmesan, the gnocchi had great pesto and garlic flavor and came out very hot. Good. $8

- Pizza Funghi - A thin crust pizza is served on a peel (the wooden paddle that takes the pizza out of the oven). The pizza was topped with mozarella, tomato, large slices of mushroom, roasted garlic and white truffle oil. When the dish was first presented, my first thought was that it's not very pretty because those large pieces of mushroom fanned out in this fashion didn't look appealing. I hope it tastes better than it looks. The outer edge of the crust was crisp, but the center was soggy. You know you're getting full slices of mushroom, so that's a good point, and the flavor was very pleasant. The roasted garlic was a nice complement without overwhelming the pizza. $9.50

Service was very good. They checked on us one time after both of our items, which came separately, had arrived. The staff is pleasant and eager to please.

Overall, I had a good experience and found the food to be fresh. It's not as fast as fast food, but they certainly reasonable had a reasonable wait time. A nice addition to options in Novato.