Ristorante Primo & Secondo

Fantastic food, wine, and service. We thoroughly enjoyed all of the food we ordered (which was a lot!) and experienced top notch service from the waiter and owner. Thanks for the fantastic meal!

This little amazing restaurant in the heart of little Italy can take you in space and time to a new level of comfort and will enlighten all your senses with the fresh bread smell and delicious food. Everything i had was better and beyond all expectations.
Very classy, clean and neat ambiance.
Great customer service too

If I could put 6 stars on 5 I would. Complete amazing experience. I felt in Italia tonight. The food & the service was top. Everything was wonderful. Love this place !

This place is our family favourite! Delicious and authentic Italian cuisine combined with an incredible team! As I have been here many times, I can say that you will not go wrong with whatever you choose on their menu … just be sure to save a little room for the budino dessert!

Great Italian restaurant. Service was outstanding. The zucchini flowers and veal chop are amazing.

Delicious meal. Duck meatball starter was delicious as was the zucchini blossom stuffed with ricotta. The side of pasta with meat ragout was very good. You can’t go wrong with fresh pasta. Main was a shared rib steak. Delicious with nice sides. Dessert was a delicious chocolate soufflé with a nice ice cream. Just a great meal with a very polite server.

Great food and excellent staff.
The menu is written in Italian on a chalk board on the wall and the lovely waiters come by and explain everything to you. It just makes the experience that much better and authentically Italian! :)
It is the perfect restaurant to celebrate a special occasion or for a quiet dinner with friends.

Had a rather run of the mill dinner at P & S on a weeknight. I made a reservation (rather left a message on an answering machine with an outdated message and never got a call back) but it would not have been necessary. The place was nearly empty on that particular Thursday night.
Had an entrée of calamari and shrimp (there was only one) in a tomato broth. The chef added some pine nuts, over sized capers and Israeli couscous to the mix. All in all it was mehhh… The sauce lacked pizazz, the ingredients didn’t complement each other and the overall result was more show than taste. Also, as you can expect, the calamari that came in the very hot tomato sauce got overcooked somewhat. Guess they used the pine nuts and capers to justify that 17 $ price tag.
My main dish was a broiled white greasy fish (sea bass I think) served with some fancy vegetable brunoise sauce that looked a whole lot better than it tasted. The fish was a tad overcooked and the edges were very dry. The dish overall was ok.
Splurged on the molten chocolate soufflé for dessert. It was tasty but the chocolate used didn’t seem to be of prime quality.
We were seated at a table near the window where we could also see into the kitchen. It seemed like a well-​run but joyless place. The chef didn’t crack a smile the entire time we were there and no one in the kitchen seemed to be enjoying themselves one bit.
The service was excellent and very attentive.
Dinner for 2, with one glass of wine, came out to about 150 $.
I guess I’m somewhat hard on this place because of the prices they charge. The value is just not there compared to other places that offer much better for the same price or less.
This place could be exceptional if they cut their prices significantly.

Went here on a recommendation from my concierge friend. Simply exquisite!!! Plus my friend was treating since she hit the jackpot at the casino :)
For entrée we had the fried calamari and smoked salmon. The fried calamari’s batter was soft and slightly salty and the meat was fresh and tender, it was served with a wedge of lemon and home made mayo. This will hit the spot if you like fried calamari. The salmon was fresh and tender, it was accompanied with pickled red onions and thin slices of olives. Hints of salty and sour on a canvas of fresh lightly cured salmon nice balance which complemented well with the calamari.
Then we had 3 pasta dishes for our mains and skipped the secondo course and opted for dessert instead. The table next to us ordered the short rib main dish and it looked delish but sadly our appetite was not with us, maybe next time.
We had the linguine with lobster and rosé sauce, the risotto with porcini mushroom and white truffle oil and gnocchi wit four cheese.
The risotto was very fragrant, never thought mushroom had much flavor but in this dish it was very apparent, you could smell the porcini and truffle throughout, and the rice was cooked to perfection soft but not mushy, yum, by far the best risotto I’ve ever had!
The lobster linguine with rosé sauce was just as good. The pasta was fresh and tender without being mushy, it soaked up the sauce very well, so tasty I was already sad after the first bite cuz I knew I would crave this again the next day.
The gnocchi was full of cheese a little overwhelming for my taste but if you like cheese I strongly recommend it. The texture is very soft and melts in your mouth.
For dessert we had the tiramisu and the profiteroles. The tiramisu was soft and melts in your mouth, with strong coffee flavor it was perfect and hit the spot. The profiteroles were crazy food. The shells were soft they were not hard even when served with ice cream, it was refreshing and drizzled with chocolate sauce yum!
Best of all we just walked in with no RSVP and we were seated right away!!!
Great place, will be coming here often, the pasta here is really top notch. The pastas all come in entré and main sizes allowing for sampling if you like, the staff is quite friendly and accommodating.

Tucked away on a quiet block on St-​Dominique, at the northern end of Little Italy, I heard about this restaurant through word-​of-​mouth, and decided to give it a try last night.
For authenticity, the menu is completely written in Italian and presented on a large chalkboard — one on either side of the restaurant. Don’t worry if you don’t understand Italian, or if you’re having trouble reading the handwriting; your waiter will explain every item on the menu in great detail.
You must realize that the restaurant caters to providing a ‘dining atmosphere’ rather than an ‘eat and run’ atmosphere. I make a point to say this, because I’ve read other reviews of this restaurant on other sites, (I’m surprised I’m the first one Unilocaling it) where people had complained about slow service. The service is not slow; the waiters are simply giving you time to talk amongst yourselves — something that we don’t do enough of anymore.
The restaurant is ridiculously close to the Jean Talon market, and the waiter did tell me that the menu can change seasonly, depending on what’s available at the market.
That being said, this restaurant is apparently famous for their Risotto. Personally, I’ve never been a fan of Risotto, but the people I was there with did say that it was among the best they’ve ever tried.
They have some very interesting items on the menu — this is not your typical Americanized Italian restaurant. Depending on what you order, some of the portions are small, but I wasn’t hungry when I left. I had very good lobster ravioli as an appetizer, followed by lamb chops for my main course. The lamb chops were cooked perfectly.
I got to sample (from one of the people I was with) the calamari and shrimp in a tomato broth, which was good, but I would’ve gotten sick of the tomato taste had I ordered it as my appetizer. I also sampled the lobster, again, served in a tomato broth. Again, good, but I would prefer it without the broth. One thing though; they say they use 1 to 1 & ¾ lbs lobsters for that dish, but trust me, it seemed smaller.
For dessert we shared the tiramisu and chocolate lava cake with espresso sauce. They were both good, but I would go with the lava cake over the tiramisu next time.
It’s not a very large venue, but it did fill up by 8:30/9:00 on a Saturday night, so I would recommend reservations. All in all, a very nice experience, and I would go back.