The Pasta Tree Restaurant & Wine Bar

The food was really good so I would recommend going in the summer and sitting outside. Best carpaccio I have ever had.

I’ve been to the Pasta Tree years ago and decided this would be a perfect venue to propose. Staff was amazing, including the owner Suzette, in helping make this a flawless and memorable experience. The food was amazing!

Amazing first time.Will eat there again!! But not on a holiday.

I have been enjoying The Pasta Tree since 1985 and I have never been disappointed!
Being a Sicilian myself, I can honestly say that the homemade pasta is remarkable! I have had many dishes from appetizers to main entree to dessert. I absolutely love the creative menu that is offered during special occasions, All are made with love!

We had a terrible experience. The food was ok - not spectacular. The service was absolutely horrible. We waited 45 minutes for our appetizer, got tired of waiting so we canceled it, and we were still charged. Our waitress came around about every 20 or so minutes. Several times we had to ask other wait staff to refill our water and at one point, we went up to the bar to get our own drinks. The room was overly HOT and very crowded. We were there for almost 3 hours. It was ridiculous.

Had a nice table for two by front window. Very nice compared to normally being squeezed in other room. The Arugula salad was really good as well as the Gorgonzola pasta. My husband loved the soup of the day, but found his chicken basil pesto pasta dish pretty bland. Very disappointed with the tiramisu desserts.

Kyle, our waiter, did a great job. He was super attentive and aware of our tight timeline (concert to get to). We will be back as the food was awesome.

Great food, great service from Kyle. Drink was half full and overly sweet (and $12!), but that's really the only negative.

For a long while, The Pasta Tree has always been wonderful. Never have been dissapointed. There specials are always great and we look forward to finding out what is on the nights menu.

The food was delicious, our waiter was very personable and helpful. It was a great date night for us.

This was our first time at this restaurant. The server was doing a great job considering he was the only server in the restaurant. He was bartender, food runner, Waiter, host, and table Buser. Kudos to Kyle for handling it all. The food was amazing. Very tasty, fresh, and worth another visit. We loved the atmosphere. Very intimate, quiet, and relaxing.

Another wonderful visit to The Pasta Tree. Ambiance is always delightful and the food is fantastic. Highly recommended to anyone looking for a delicious dinner out any night of the week.

Sadly, we didn’t get the opportunity to eat here. We arrived ten minutes early for our reservation and were asked to be seated at the bar until our table was ready. We had a great experience with the bartender- knowledgeable, friendly, and made a great cocktail. We were seated a little later and waited... and waited. Waited a few minutes before being greeted by our server who briefly explained the night’s specials. My fiancé ordered another cocktail. And then nearly 30 minutes (!) passed before we flagged down our server and said we’d be leaving. He never got his cocktail and we never saw the server to order our entrees or appetizer. Very strange. The server was apologetic but after waiting so long for just a drink, we couldn’t risk being there for another two hours just trying to have dinner. Also, it appeared that there was no manager on site and servers were acting as host. Another server who was attending to a nearby table also brought out multiple dishes of pasta with Saran Wrap covering them. What does that imply? Reheated pasta? Hmm...

Have the manicotti w/ red sauce and cream. Yum
The pasta dish w/ tomato vegetarian has a kick to it.

The one waitress worked her tail off to fill the multi-roles of hostess, bartender, wait staff, and bus boy! While we arrived earlier than our reservation, we were 25 minutes into our reservation time before we received anything other than bread and water....and we had to ask for it. I could have looked past all of this had the food been good, but it was not. I opted under the circumstances to avoid anything with seafood (I did not trust it)...going for an Italian classic of Eggplant Parmesan...which by the way was on the specials list. It was terrible. Still trying to wrap my head around how you can miss on something like this, but they did. 2-1/2 medium pieces of eggplant! Like putting a larger portion would have costed so much more? Was it breaded? It is still mystery to me. What was that sauce? Marinara or Arrabbiata? And it was not just my entree, other had the same experience. Food was terrible. Service was incredibly slow. Had a chance to glance into the kitchen, and it did not look clean. Recommendation is to stay away from this place. There are much better Italian restaurants in the Milwaukee!

The most of the food was very salty, even the bread. No music playing either. Yet the wait service was outstanding. Very good at her job.

Delicious food and attentive waiter in spite of a crowd.

Kyle was very good. Chicken pesto linguini/crab linguini were nothing special.

We were celebrating New Year’s Eve! We LOVE Pasta Tree. Everything was great except for a spat our waitress was having with her co-workers about her tips. We shared that the conversation was inappropriate for customers to overhear.!Other than that, we had a great time, as usual.

We took our family there for New Year’s Eve dinner. We we the only ones there as we went early before the rush and yet getting our dishes cleared to a few queue to different staff. When our water was refilled the person (not our server) would reach over us and pour splashing on us and our dishes.

The food was great as always but service was a bit under par

The food was very good and they accommodated one in our party with food restrictions and gave parking suggestion as the restaurant does not have their own lot. The dining spaces are unique as one can tell the building is very historic, and may be tricky for larger parties or those with accessibility issues. Our server was really great and seemed to cover a large area which if they were busier may have been an issue. I wouldn’t say it was my new favorite, but I would go back again.

BAD SERVICE
I had dinner on Christmas Eve, which may be the reason for the horrible service. The restaurant was very busy, which a restaurant in business for 30 some years should be prepared for regardless of a wait staff calling in sick. All staff we interacted with seemed lazy and did not try to make the experience better. We tried to have a drink at the bar prior to being seated, but the bartender ignored us. We then sat at our table thinking service would get better, 10 minutes pass and nobody approached the table. I had to ask a random guy (manager???) for drinks water bread our food..our second round of drinks never arrived. We passed on dessert due to bad service. Everyone in the restaurant was complaining. It’s really too bad as the food is very good, however with so many dining options there is simply no reason to eat here. At the least, management could have given free dessert or assisted with drink orders..something to make diner’s experience better.

There for Christmas Eve. Food was fine and Bree was delightful

Yes, I would. The ambience was good, and my husband loved his scallops/artichoke/alfredo dinner.
My dinner was not the best - the eggplant in the eggplant parm was tough, requiring a knife & fork to cut through. The pasta was also spicy, which I wasn't expecting. The service was acceptable but not great.
I would go again and try another dish, many of the dishes looked really good.

Love this place. We had a great time. It was a bit noisy, but on a Saturday night, you kind of expect that. Everyone enjoyed their food and took home boxes for the next day's meal. Our waitress was VERY busy, but also very attentive. Our entries came quite quickly, but we never felt rushed.

Pasta Tree has lost its charm. Service was not good. It seems as if the whole staff is new or almost new; very confused. The food varied in quality. It used to always be very good. Little things were odd; they served butter with the complementary bread basket instead of olive oil like they always used to. Just not the same- hope they can pull it together.

Delicious food, very attentive wait staff. Would dine again

Not enough staff

The restaurant was very understaffed on a Sunday early evening. The server & the hostess were WONDERFUL but there was only so much they could do. I will keep trying this favorite venue and I hope this was a one-time scheduling difficulty.

Pastas were excellent. Calamari appetizer was on the dry and chewier side. New menu or cooks, so food was a bit slower to receive than normal for a quiet Thursday night. We will come back for the delicious pastas though!

The restaurant was understaffed on the Wednesday evening we stopped in. The host/bartender/server, yes he did all three, explained there were only a couple of reservations on the books so the hostess asked for the evening off. They did not expect the amount of walk in business they had. It seems to me that a server and then one other person that can cover the bar and greeting/seating and maybe help out with bussing or delivering bar orders would be the minimum.
That said, the food was outstanding and the restaurant has a cozy charm. This one experience won't make me stay away, but another one like that might, no matter how good the food is.

I ordered the meat lasagna which I have ordered many times in the past. It had always been a large portion that filled the dish it was served in. I usually had to take some home. This time the lasagna didn't fill 50% of the serving dish. It was a tiny portion yet the price was $22. That's unacceptable.

The bread served should come out warm and have a toasted crust. It was doughy and cold.

Great pasta dishes in a quaint and venerable east side location.

The food was so good. If you are looking for an authentic food Italian food experience and delicious wine... make sure to come to pasta tree. A truly unique and wonderful experience. From the decor to the quality food... this is one of my favorite neighborhood restaurants to come to.

Amazing Pasta! Cozy atmosphere and great service!

As some others have said, we had trouble getting served...but to their credit, the manager and our eventual waitress were very apologetic. Somehow, our waitress did not know we were her table (and it was 7 p.m., so not like the restaurant had just opened.

My wife and I had lasagna. Both were cold in the middle (my wife sent hers back). Seemed to be very little pasta in the dishes. Our son and his girlfriend were very pleased with their meals.

Bread and salad excellent.

Could have used a second glass of wine, but waitress never came back to see if we were interested. I don't necessarily fault her--she seemed to be working her butt off.

We'll probably go back at some point, but will wait a while--seems as if there's some issues at the moment.

Great window seat.

It took us more than 30 min to get talked to by a server. After that, we only got contacted 2 more times. We had empty water and wine glasses nearly our entire time.

When we got there, a few minutes a head of our reservation, the restaurant was understaffed, all the servers were flustered and had little time for any particular table. We had to ask several times even to get silverware. We waited so long between our appetizer and the waiter coming back for our main order that a busser assumed we were done and started to clear our table.

To add insult to injury when the check came, we were charged for a more expensive wine than we had ordered. I finally asked to speak to the manager who was rude and combative when I explained the situation, and she then tried to blame our server (who seemed to be a bartender filling in, and was presumably doing his best). She ended up comping one of our meals but the whole experience was unpleasant. The food and prices, while fine, weren’t nearly good enough to make up for the hassle.

We have been going to Pasta Tree for years but it is not the same as it used to be. They were understaffed and lacking attention.