Italian restaurants serving pasta sauces out of cans or bottles

[Jingthing]

Major pisser.

Tonight I tried a new Italian restaurant (to me).

Some of the pastas were labeled as homemade.

Including the gnocchi.

So I ordered gnocchi with pesto.

The gnocchi was OK though I doubt they make it in house.

The pesto was definitely out of a bottle they buy at a local supermarket.

I know because I have tried the same supermarket bottled pesto.

It's not very nice. It's processed and has lots of chemicals. It's not real pesto taste you get by properly making it yourself.

Don't you hate it when restaurants do stuff like that?

If they told you they were doing that on the menu, nobody would order it right, unless it was super cheap?

Isn't there a reasonable expectation with an Italian restaurant (run by Italians) that the SAUCE for their pasta will be something they actually COOK rather than opening a can or bottle?

Edited February 25, 2014 by Jingthing

[MB1]

dam_n right Jing....

Just like mama used to make it..

I want San Marzano tomatoes on Pizza, get crap here in Thailand...

Edited February 25, 2014 by MB1

[NeverSure]

I usually make my sauces from canned. It saves me a lot of shopping for the ingredients. Then I dump several cans or bottles into a pot, heat, and season to my taste. Then I put it into several freezer containers and freeze most of it for future use.

[wooloomooloo]

Thailand isn't Italy, JT. You can't get the ingredients.

My wife cooks Thai food here in the UK as close to original but never the same.

Was the baht bus journey home trouble-free?

[Jingthing]

Thailand isn't Italy, JT. You can't get the ingredients.

My wife cooks Thai food here in the UK as close to original but never the same.

Was the baht bus journey home trouble-free?

Blimey, that's ridiculous.

I've had no trouble getting chef made pesto at OTHER Italian restaurants in Thailand.

In actuality, you CAN pretty much get the ingredients.

There is no need to use a bottled pesto in a restaurant. EVER. If you're somewhere with no Italian basil, then don't serve pesto.

In Pattaya, there are gourmet Italian purveyors to restaurants.

To pass off your restaurant as an actual Italian restaurant with a real Italian chef and serve pesto out of bottle they bought at Villa brings shame upon the Italian people!

It's the Italian equivalent of an Israeli restaurant serving hummus and then giving you some chemical laden Australian in a tub fake hummus.

That's the value that actual restaurants offer. They actually COOK. Or they're supposed to. When they suggest they actually cook with their menu and marketing and then don't ... don't get me started.

Also in many or most cases, cooking from scratch is actually CHEAPER for food costs, sometimes much cheaper, and of course the product is much better for the customer, so it's a win win. Places that do like this chemical pesto are just plain LAZY.

Edited February 25, 2014 by Jingthing

[jcgodber]

I think the 2 key words here are CHEAP & LAZY

It is just not that hard to make your own home made pasta sauce.

I NEVER buy store bought sauce.

I always make a large pot of pasta sauce and then freeze it in one serving containers.

I never complain about the taste or quality of the sauce as I have made it myself.

[Jingthing]

I love to cook mostly Chinese food but don't bother with cooking every kind of food in the world. I do have my own pesto thing, but it' not traditional (just olive oil, a little parm cheese, chopped Thai red peppers, lots of minced garlic and spicy mustard). One good reason people go to restaurants is to eat things they won't or can't cook themselves for whatever reasons. This isn't about customers being lazy anyway. We're paying money to restaurants. We're allowed to be lazy. If you go to a Thai style spaghetti shack you know you'll be getting sweet ketchup sauce, but if you go an Italian restaurant, with an Italian chef, and even Italian customers, you have a right to expect a little bit of integrity in the kitchen.

BTW, since you want to talk about home cooking, I use locally made NANA bottled tomato sauce and I think it is quite OK for my home uses. It would be much better than sweet kethcup in a restaurant but it would be shocking to find an actual Italian chef place using it in a restaurant here.

Of course I know I COULD make a much better sauce at home cooking it myself but I just don't want to. A chef in a restaurant is supposed to want to cook, like it's their JOB, right?

Edited February 25, 2014 by Jingthing

[Jubes]

Pasta sauce not home made in an Italian restaurant? Shame shame, BTW hard to find a decent pizza here also

Edited February 25, 2014 by Jubes

[wooloomooloo]

If you're not happy, JT, don't patronise the establishment. Life's too short. Same for baht buses.

Find another way that fits your requirements.

You seem to be caught in a never ending eddy.

Sent from my iPhone using Thaivisa Connect Thailand

[Ulysses G.]

I often find bottled or canned sauces to be better than what you get from foreign restaurants in Thailand, but don't particularly like pesto anyway.

Edited February 26, 2014 by Ulysses G.

[harrry]

Tomatos here are rather patchy and though Roma tomatoes are available they do not really match the real italian ones (or even the Australian ones).

For my sauce at home I cheat. I use the aro pasta sauce with oregano that they sell at macro and to it add an equal quantity of fresh roma tomatoes, fresh basil and packet oregano and several fresh onions. I then use minced meat (usually pork) as it cheaper or chicken andslow cook for several hours. I then freeze it.

If a restaurant cannot go to at least his trouble it is not a restaurant worth patronising.

[Pattayarossoblu]

I am in that kind of business:before have worked in one of the best italian restaurant in Thailand,now i will move to another one in Kao Yai start from the 13th March.Who wrote lazy and cheap,he is completely right.Not for the pesto sauce:if u do a very well tasteful pesto sauce with the original ingredients,it costs you a little,but its very quickly and easy to prepare.But for the other sauce its take a long time,expecially for the ragu'(or bolognese)What happen to you is quite usual in Thailand,expecially for a little restaurant.I will be glad if u could tell me in a private messagge where and the name of that restaurant.In Pattaya there are 74 italian restaurant...how many of them are 100%italian and run by italian people?Leave to you the answer.

Ps:As i told many times i am sorry if my English is not correct

[Boyce]

Makro pasta sauce allot of them use 70baht a Ltr in a red plastic pack , it's ghastly sh--t.

There's a Italian pizza place in khon kean advertising home made pizza sauce anyone tried it.

Edited February 26, 2014 by Boyce

[wayned]

What is the matter with you guys. Are you just plain lazy or afraid to experiment? Who in the world would think that the crap out of a can or a bag is pasta sauce! I have a can of Prego in the pantry that has been there for so long that t's rusty. It was taped to a bag of pasta that I bought and I have forgotten to feed it to my dogs, albeit they might spit it out on the floor! I'm making a pot of basic sause as I write. Fresh tomatoes, basil grown in my garden , fresh mushrooms, oregano, sugar, salt, pepper. all simmered slowly for hours. When it's finished I put it in bags and freeze it. There are so many options for using it, fresh Tapapia filets briowned with eggpalnt covered with sauce and finished with a sprinkling of grated cheese, whatever kind that you like. I add a little prik dong made from homegrown haberno and jalapeno chillis to give it a kick. As far as spagehetti and piza I like fresh vegetables rather than add tomato puree. I don't undersatnd why people have so much trouble making their own rather than opening a can and then complaining. The crap in a can is just that, crap, no mater what brand!

If it tastes like your mother used to make, all that it proves is that your mother knew how open a can. Pesto is easy, I grow horapa(sweet basil) in the back yard, the only prooblem is getting a decent parmagana cheese whichj is next to impossible where I live so I pick up a block on my yearly trip tto Bangkok.

Edited February 26, 2014 by wayned

[Goat Roper]

Hey Jing, I have been served leftover fried rice from the night before so pasta sauce from a can is a step up IMO. How do I know this, when I profusely complained about the soggy/bland rice it was immediately replaced with something more edible with no extra charge. TIT and all that.

[harrry]

I do not know too many Italian Mommas who will make their sauces using fresh tomatoes. The first thing that is done every harvest is to make bottles and bottles of tomato concentrate with which to make the pasta through the year. In view of the cost of real tomatoes here ripened in the sun I think it is reasonable to use a base such as the Aro one which is really a tomato puree with tomato paste added. THis however is only the base which can be extended with canned or fresh tomatoes and fresh herbs. This comes pretty close to the real thing.

Using real tomatoes would need at least a kilo of tomatoes a serve and at up to 150 baht a kilo would be totally uneconomic.

[Jingthing]

The topic was actually about pesto. Of course it is fine to make tomato sauces with canned tomatoes as an INGREDIENT for the COOKING. That's not the same thing as serving a pre-made completed sauce out of a can or bottle.

[negreanu]

2 words. Antonios and Angelina's - end of italian restaurants in bkk.

[harrry]

The topic was actually about pesto. Of course it is fine to make tomato sauces with canned tomatoes as an INGREDIENT for the COOKING. That's not the same thing as serving a pre-made completed sauce out of a can or bottle.

italian-restaurants-serving-pasta-sauces-out-of-cans-or-bottles/#entry7493073

[Jingthing]

The topic was actually about pesto. Of course it is fine to make tomato sauces with canned tomatoes as an INGREDIENT for the COOKING. That's not the same thing as serving a pre-made completed sauce out of a can or bottle.

italian-restaurants-serving-pasta-sauces-out-of-cans-or-bottles/#entry7493073

Look.

I already clarified this.

There is a BIG DIFFERENCE between using canned tomatoes as an INGREDIENT in a sauce (which is fine) to using a fully cooked sauce out of a can or bottle in a RESTAURANT.

[smokie36]

Sad to hear about another crappy restaurant in Pattaya....I'd be annoyed by this too JT.

Fresh pesto linguine is one of my favourite dishes.

[Jingthing]

Sad to hear about another crappy restaurant in Pattaya....I'd be annoyed by this too JT.

Fresh pesto linguine is one of my favourite dishes.

I can't mention the restaurant but I think overall it's not a crappy restaurant.

Like a lot of places anywhere in the world really, some things are good, some things not.

But bottled highly chemically processed pesto sauce is an atrocious culinary sin!

BTW, it wouldn't shock me if the restaurant denied it if confronted but you can't fool me, I know the taste of that exact brand of bottled sauce (sadly).

Edited February 26, 2014 by Jingthing

[Morakot]

Mamma neeever makes paaasta like this!

[Pattayarossoblu]

Anyone went to eat to Toscana Restaurant in Pattaya?

[Jingthing]

I guess it really could have been worse ...

Make an Italian person cry today and show them this picture of baby diarrhoea cannelloni.

http://dimlylitmealsforone.tumblr.com/page/2

Edited February 26, 2014 by Jingthing

[tutsiwarrior]

the two main ingredients of bolognaise, canned tomatoes and ground beef, are difficult if not impossible to find in Thailand outside of areas inhabited by westerners...however, a restaurant in Pattaya has no excuse...

[healthbkkbkk]

When my kids were growing up I was very strict about what they ate so I made my own sauces and pesto. It isn't that difficult so a restaurant run by Italians has no excuse in my opinion unless they are a very inexpensive restaurant.

[quidnunc]

Thailand isn't Italy, JT. You can't get the ingredients.

My wife cooks Thai food here in the UK as close to original but never the same.

Was the baht bus journey home trouble-free?

For pesto, you absolutely can get the ingredients. The ingredients of a standard pesto being basil, Italian parmesan cheese, olive oil, pine nuts or walnuts, garlic, and salt. The basil here is slightly different from Italian basil but tastes very very similar. And excellent importated Italian pasta is also available here.

And for most other Italain sauces, the ingredients are easily available at least in areas where there are lots of Europeans and Americans.

[quidnunc]

Tomatos here are rather patchy and though Roma tomatoes are available they do not really match the real italian ones (or even the Australian ones).

For my sauce at home I cheat. I use the aro pasta sauce with oregano that they sell at macro and to it add an equal quantity of fresh roma tomatoes, fresh basil and packet oregano and several fresh onions. I then use minced meat (usually pork) as it cheaper or chicken andslow cook for several hours. I then freeze it.

If a restaurant cannot go to at least his trouble it is not a restaurant worth patronising.

You can make a great tomato sauce using the various kinds of small tomatoes available here.

[quidnunc]

I do not know too many Italian Mommas who will make their sauces using fresh tomatoes. The first thing that is done every harvest is to make bottles and bottles of tomato concentrate with which to make the pasta through the year. In view of the cost of real tomatoes here ripened in the sun I think it is reasonable to use a base such as the Aro one which is really a tomato puree with tomato paste added. THis however is only the base which can be extended with canned or fresh tomatoes and fresh herbs. This comes pretty close to the real thing.

Using real tomatoes would need at least a kilo of tomatoes a serve and at up to 150 baht a kilo would be totally uneconomic.

Don't know what kind of tomatoes you use, but with a kilo of fresh tomatoes you can make enough sauce to plentifully serve 4. Of course, if you're idea of tomato sauce is boiling down the sauce until it's thick, maybe so, but that's not an Italian thing. As for Italian Mommas using boiled down concentrate (tomato paste?) to make sauce, maybe before tomatoes were canned. But not for a long time now, fortunately.