Pastoral ARTisan Pizza + Kitchen + Bar

Lovely pizza parlor! Its an easy 10 minute walk from boston south station! They serve a variety of pizzas, pastas, and other dishes. I got the steak frites! Super delicious. They have a wine list and serve yummy cocktails as well.

we ordered drinks and parmesan fries. The fries came out luke warm. I asked to have some fresh ones. They brought more out in 5 minutes. The same fries-crunchy! hard! If you decide to order, then beware. You have been warned!

Enjoyed our second visit to Pastoral and it was as expected - Excellent!! The food, vibe, service, location and ambiance makes this one of my favorite casual restaurants in Boston.

Sebastian was our attentive server and was excellent. We had a couple pizzas, pasta and I even tried the grilled squid. Yes - I'll get it again, if you're wondering!!

Be sure to make a reservation for Saturday night. We arrived at 5:10pm and the restaurant was 1/2 full. By 6pm it was packed with enthusiastic customers enjoying their dinner and wine.

Owen was our server, he did great. The food was fantastic. The music was counter to the ambiance, dingy rap music played a bit too loud is odd.

The presence of the (very pretty!) wood oven created high expectations and the vibe entering the restaurant was very positive. Good lighting, lots of Italian cultural references. We (a bunch of Italians) were ready! Unfortunately, the food we ordered didn't live up to the excitement:
1) First appetizer (pics in order) had a papery, dry and bland flavor, yet it was greasy.
2) The meatballs tasted like a commercial / supermarket, not artisanal, product (I want to stress this is purely a flavor-based observation, i'm not implying anything on the actual source)
3) The margherita pizza presented itself very well, though it was very salty (it sholdn't be) and - more importantly, burnt - one member in our party had a pizza that was completely black (picture 4 shows partially the amount of dough involved after scraping off the topping). Finally, while my pizza tasted good at the moment, it turned out difficult to digest.
4) The spritz was ok, on the blander side but within standard quality for an average Italian restaurant in the US.
For the price and expectations, it was an overall disappointing experience for our party.