Cara Cara Pasta & Cicheti located at 16 Vogell Rd, Unit D in Richmond Hill

Cara Cara Pasta & Cicheti (“cicheti” translates to “small amounts” or small snacks) is exactly what the name implies.  It’s a relatively new restaurant (opened in September 2024) for Italian pasta and small plates, and as I was craving for some good pasta, Google Maps showed this spot to me.  Located at the 16 Vogell Road plaza, there is plenty of parking available.

Storefront

Entrance view

For our monthly date night, we came here for dinner around 5:20 p.m. (they open at 5 p.m.) to an empty restaurant as we were the first patrons there.

I liked the interior design.  It was sleek and modern and sophisticated-looking.  The lone server brought us the menus and a choice of tap or sparkling water.

Dining room and counter

Table setting

October 2025 menu

As I noticed in the glowing online reviews, the menu is small but the quality was supposed to be top notch.  The server also told us about the two daily special appetizers and I appreciated so much that these were written down on paper as opposed to telling us verbally (as most restaurants do).  I’m a visual learners so seeing it on paper helped.

Special small plates

Drinks menu

We ordered 2 appetizers and 2 pastas to share.

Orecchie Du Maiale $8
-fried pig ears, salsa colatura

The food came in a reasonable amount of time.  The husband chose the Orecchie Du Maiale (fried pig ears).  I recently had pig ears at a hot pot restaurant as a side dish.  Cara Cara elevated the dish here by frying it.  It was saucy and savory as per my liking.  The salsa colatura was basically pickled radish, but it wasn’t anything to write home about.

Carpaccio di Fichi $12
-fresh figs, torched lardo, stracciatella, shoestring potatoes

The other appetizer, Carpaccio di Fichi, was presented artistically on what looked like a cake stand.  I live for these details in “fine dining”!  It was a fig carpaccio dish with torched lardo (pork fat), stracciatella cheese and shoestring potatoes.  It was a very light dish and I emphasize on the word LIGHT.  It was refreshing but tasty too.  I wish the figs were bigger slices and had more lardo and a bit more than just shoestring potatoes (crispy thin potatoes) so that it would be a better bite, but then I guess that would defeat the purpose of it being a cicheti.

See the thin lardo and the small slice of fig?

Linguine Al Nero Di Seppia $29
-Nova Scotia lobster, calamari, seafood bisque, cured red mullet roe

The Linguine Al Nero Di Seppia (squid ink pasta) was presented like a long roped spiral with morsels of the Nova Scotia lobster and tomatoes decorated throughout.  The linguine was coarse but had a chewy texture.  The seafood bisque was thick and grainy.  It smelled great but was just good – okay.  The calamari was half-size rings and very skinny.

Cavetelli $21
-housemade Italian sausage, broccoli, pecorino

The Cavetelli on the other hand was very tasty and also a beautiful artwork.  It was so colourful!  This pasta dish was also very tasty.  The cavetelli pasta was perfectly al dente.  Everything was so small though.  The homemade Italian sausage sizes were the size of a fingernail, the broccoli FLORETS were fried and dried and like a speck, and that was basically it.  It was very yummy though.

I scraped every last bit of sauce and food from the plates as the taste was truly on par but just the portions lacked.

Our spread at Cara Cara

Dessert menu

I looked at the dessert menu out of curiosity to see what they offered, but nothing called out to me.

By the time we left around 6:40 p.m., there were four other tables of patrons dining in.  I can see this being a popular place for top-end Italian food and pasta for foodies to try.  It would be a nice place place to dine in solo too.  I kind of wish they had an alcohol licence as I recently have been peckish for some alcoholic drinks; all their drinks are non-alcoholic.

Their menu changes seasonally as what we ordered were from their autumn 2025 menu.