Wayne W.

When we're in El Paso, a half dozen or so times a year, we usually go to Landry's. But last night was apparently prom for some local schools, so we figured our odds of getting in and having a good time at Landry's were not high, so my wife fired up the Yelp app on my iPhone and quickly found Trattoria Bella Sera. And we're very glad we did. It looks a bit divish and low-budgte driving up, and the the sign about the $6.99 lunch special on the side of the building was off-putting for me, but don't let that fool you -- this is a good restaurant. The service was a little slow initially, but I'm not going to ding them on that as it was Saturday night and they were pretty full. The waitress was slow to take our drink order, a man whom I thought might be a manager not only got our drinks but also took our order for our appetizer, bruschetta. The waitress appeared moments after the man left and we told her that our drinks and appetizer had been taken care of, and she took our food order. My wife went with the cioppino, which was a special last night, I had the spaghetti carbonara. I like my carbonara with sweet peas, and since I noticed that although it wasn't listed in the carbonara, peas appeared in other dishes on the menu, so I asked for them. No problem. Table bread arrived in the form of fresh-baked rolls, fresh enough that some baked together, 'kissing'. Nice and yeasty, they also came with a container of olive oil with rosemary, garlic, and perhaps some other goodies. Very nice, and it wasn't one or two pieces per person at the table: I think there was still one or two rolls in the basket when we finished our meal. My Caesar salad arrived, nothing to brag about. The dressing was on the side and had good flavor, the croutons were acceptable. Like I said, good enough but unremarkable. Then the bruschetta arrived.... Major yum. A bowl filled with diced tomato, herbs, glistening in olive oil. Six nice pieces of crustinni, everything drizzled with a sweet balsamic. The bread was crisp yet soft, perhaps a touch thick. Very inviting to stick a fork in the tomatoes and pile it high on the bread. Wonderful fragrance, wonderful flavor. One thing that I'll never understand is that there never seems to be a good balance between the number of pieces of bread and the amount of tomatoes when it comes to bruschetta, but as long as it's too much tomatoes, I don't mind. Since we had table bread remaining, I used that with some of the tomatoes: not as good as the crustinni but still good. And then our entrées arrived. My wife's soup with two more pieces of crustinni, albeit without the balsamic drizzle, and my pasta, complete with peas. The cioppino was very good, the broth nice and thick and very good to dip bread in to. My wife thought it was a little heavy on the tomatoes, but otherwise quite excellent. I had a few spoonfuls and liked it a lot. I'm personally not likely to order soups as an entree, but was very glad my wife ordered this. My pasta was great. Good flavor from the sweet peas and pancetta. The ratios of pasta and cheese sauce was very nicely balanced, i.e. the pasta wasn't swimming in sauce like you'd typically get at Olive Garden. The portion size was not huge, but still more than satisfying. Dessert. They don't do a dessert menu, they have a dessert tray that they bring to your table and explain. My wife is a serious chocolate fiend, and since she was in the restroom when the tray arrived, I went with the chocolate mousse cake for us to split. They also have a chocolate mascarpone brownie with a fudge sauce that looks quite yummy, we'll try that next time. Back to the mousse. Wife quite liked it, I thought it was good, but perhaps just a little higher cacao content than what I'm used to. I look forward to trying the brownie. So. In conclusion: highly recommended. They've been there for six years according to our waitress, I wish them another sixty if they can pull it off and maintain the quality. We shall definitely be returning, For two iced teas, appetizer, two entrées, one dessert, the meal came out to about $45 before tip, a most agreeable price. Two comments about other reviews. First, it's on the northwest corner of Montana and Rutherglen streets, and there's a traffic light at that intersection. No problems getting in and out of it. My iPhone wanted us to go further east on Montana and hang a u-turn, I don't know why. Second, they do have a TV and it was on, but it was muted with subtitles and on the Food Network. Easy to ignore. I thought the lighting was a little on the dim side, it made reading the menu a bit harder than it should be.