This is a casual restaurant with currently two locations in Vancouver offering pasta dishes at very affordable price. I visited their Kits location on Yew (their other location is in Downtown on Davie). In adition to their "House Special Pastas", they have a Build Your Own option where you get to pick your own combinations of sauces, meat etc. I went with the latter option, and got a Fussili and Gnocchi. Although I did find their sauces to be a bit bland an underwhelming, I still quite enjoyed the pastas, and am very impressed by the very generous amount of meat and cheese they provide. They did appear to have overcharged me: on my receipt I noticed that there was an additional $1.50 charge for extra meat/cheese/vegetable, even though I didn't add that any of my dishes, and I did notice the cashier struggling while punching in my order into their computer. Even with the surcharge however, the total came to $25, which was still a very good deal for two plates of pasta. While I personally didn't find the portions to be as enormous as some others claim, it was still very good, and a single plate is enough to satisfy me. All in all, I was very impressed by Basil Pasta Bar, and I strongly recommend it to anyone looking for a tasty and affordable meal.

Create Your Own Pasta (Fussili, $11.40):
3.5/5
I had the pasta with alfredo sauce, chorizo, broccoli, and parmesan. The pasta was cooked to my liking, being tender without being mushy. There was a very generous amount of shave parmesan and chorizo present. I was a bit disappointed with the alfredo sauce however, as I found it to be a bit on the thinner side and under-seasoned, making the entire dish a bit bland.

Create Your Own Pasta (Gnocchi, $10.94):
4/5
I had gnocchi with pesto cream sauce, chicken, zucchini, and goat cheese. This was the first time that I've had gnocchi, so I'm not really sure what it's supposed to taste like. I can say, however, that I quite enjoyed the dumplings here. They were soft, slightly chewy, and had a good savoury flavour on their own. The pesto cream sauce was considerably thicker here, forming a nice coating on the pasta, and had a nice fragrance of basil. Although it was also somewhat bland, since the gnocchi was already seasoned, that did not bother me too much here. Again, there was a good amount of goat cheese, which was creamy and tangy, providing a nice flavour to the dish. There was also a fairly good amount of chicken.