Pasadena Happy Hour: Dish

Dish in Pasadena opened some time ago and I finally made it out last week for happy hour. I had spotted it when I was at Pop Champagne Bar. Initial thoughts? Dish is better.

First off, they offer $3 small bites and $5 small plates as well as $4 well drinks, selected beer and wine. This is a much better deal already. The items sounded fairly interesting. We got the veal pancetta stuffed olives, truffle fries, mussels and French 0nion soup. The two of us made it out of happy hour just under $40 which translates to a $20 a piece which wasn’t bad at all since we each had two drinks.

The fried olives stuffed with veal pancetta was quite tasty. We learned the chef recently left and now there’s a new chef, Amanda, in the kitchen. She has revamped the menu.

The French onion soup unfortunately was way too sweet for me. It didn’t have that caramelized onion flavor to me. The soup was fairly watery as well.

I had a couple of well vodka tonics and they were the proper VTs that I loved. The right amount of tonic and definitely the right amount of vodka. They washed down these slightly too salty mussels very well. I loved that there was spinach in this dish. Too often do you go to happy hour and leave without eating any veggies.

After nibbling on some fries, we were off to seek romance with Caltech boys or at least a latte at the nearby newly opened Intelligentsia.

Dish Bistro and Bar

53 East Union Street
Pasadena, CA 91103-3924
(626) 795-5546

** One last thing- they are unrelated to the Dish in La Canada. The owner’s son told us they probably get that question 3 or 4 times a day.