Food, service at Pasta Cucina in Boulder Station have potential to be perfect, but fall short

So close.

In many ways, Pasta Cucina at Boulder Station was so, so close to perfection.

But not quite there.

And that's sad in a way - the missed opportunity - but also a positive, because these are things that can be easily fixed.

We'll start with the service. The hostess was phenomenal - bright, quick-witted, pleasant and polished. The server not so much, but we'll cut her a little slack because it seemed she was serving an inordinately large number of tables. Still, our starter came out too quickly - before our wine - and our entrees took too long, so we suspect there were some timing issues in the kitchen as well.

On to the food. Chicken cannelloni ($11.99), which we chose mainly because it was the dish that most resembled the oh-so-tempting photo on the restaurant's website, started out with great promise. The crepes that enfolded the filling were ethereally delicate and the cheese-tinged garlic cream sauce was so good, I think I'd be happy to eat it on a plate of pasta. And the chicken-spinach-and-ricotta filling had wonderful flavor.

The problem: The filling was dry. Way too dry, and even that fantastic sauce couldn't save it. Definitely more moisture needed here.

The rigatoni with sausage and meatballs ($11.99) had perfectly al-dente pasta (and rigatoni, with its thicker form, can be tricky to time right) and a sauce with such depth and soul that we could easily imagine Nonna standing at the stove. The sausage chunks were well-flavored, too, as were the meatballs, but the latter suffered the same fate as the cannelloni filling in that they were dry. And the dish (the food, not the crockery), though warm in the center, was definitely on the cool side at the edges. It's possible that it was held for the cannelloni, which were indeed piping hot, and if so, that's another timing issue.

Even our starter was this close to perfect. It was called Caprese Croutons ($7.99), a fairly inventive use of traditional Caprese salad ingredients - that would be mozzarella, tomatoes (roasted and chilled, in this case) and fresh basil - served on a garlic crouton. And I get that the word "crouton" was used here, but what it translated to in this case was "hard." I didn't expect a slighted toasted piece of bread, as in a bruschetta, but this was just too hard. Bonus points for the thick balsamic reduction squirted on the plate around the croutons, and minus points in that the same hard slices were served with the cannelloni.

And the atmosphere. If you haven't been to Boulder Station since the big renovation a few years ago, you might be surprised, as we were, to see that quite a facelift has taken place. And that was the case, too, in Pasta Cucina, which its soft, neutral colors, soft candlelight, big wooden beams to evoke the Italian countryside and backlit mirrors on one wall. So what was the downside? None, actually; this was one area when Pasta Cucina wasn't just close to perfect but actually there.

Now, if they can just boost things a little in the other areas.

Contact reporter Heidi Knapp Rinella at hrinella@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0474.