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I've visited Piccolino a number of times and have always found the food to be excellent.
The service is friendly, attentive and authentic and the waiting staff always make you feel like you're the only one there!
www.chesterexpress.co.uk/restaurant.aspx?restaurant=2&category=2
An Italian restaurant with an interesting menu that covers pasta and pizza but has much more interesting things too. Very friendly service, quite spacious, reasonable prices. I got a table easily on a Saturday evening without booking - a much more attractive option than the noisy and heaving Pizza Express next door!
11 St Benedicts St, Norwich, NR2 4PE -less than 5 mins stroll from City Hall and the market.
This quality Italian place, focused on simply executed dishes based on fresh produce is a great new addition to the surprisingly limited St Albans dining scene.
Despite its affluence and increasing popularity as one of the nicest places to commute to London from, St Albans has a pretty disappointing range of places to eat out. Sure, there's the creditable Darcy's on Hatfield Road, a recent addition to the slick Loch Fyne seafood chain on Verulam Road (plus a great, unpretentious curry house in Mumtaj on London Road) but that's about it. Until now.
Cibo DiVino opened in summer 2007 and despite its central, if relatively unprepossessing location behind M&S and Boots there are treats in store.
Service is warm and welcoming, the room is cosy and well lit, homemade bread is offered with your apertif (we had a couple of glasses of appley house Prosecco).
The focus is on fresh regional Italian food (think modern Italian style championed by the likes of the River Cafe or Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall). Some examples from the short but appetising menu are: antipasti (say, buffalo mozzarella with grilled vegetables, an autumnal lentil soup), pasta (I had a delicious rabbit and black olive ragu with fettuccine but there was also linguine with clams), fish (simply grilled whole bream, scallops with cauliflower puree), meat and game (guinea fowl with polenta, a veal chop), vegetables and desserts (honey semi-freddo, tiramisu).
Expect to pay about £50 a head for the works: aperitifs, three courses, a good bottle of wine, coffee. We were offered a complimentary digestif.
We really hope this charming place is a success - it fills a much needed space and does so really well.
Cibo DiVino Ristorante Italiano
4-5 Waddington Road
St. Albans
AL3 5EX
www.cibodivino.co.uk
Tel 01727899189
St Albans City (mainline/Thameslink) or St Albans Abbey (branch line from Watford/Silverlink)
This is a great new Italian restaurant in Clifton Village. As a small independent restaurant it offers a seasonal menu.The owner/head chef is from Veneto the northeast region of Italy and this forms the flavour of the menu. Having only opened Nov (06) it has had many favourable reviews. Metro four stars
25,The Mall
Clifton Village
BS8 4JG
0117 973 4499
www.proseccoclifton.com
This Italian cafe is owned by the Varani family and is well known by locals and people in Glasgow. Its vanilla ice cream is not too sweet and has a pale brown colour and is absolutely delicious! My late dad Sam used to make special trips and buy a large container to bring home when I was a little child and my mouth is watering at the moment of writing!
37 High Glencairn Street
Kilmarnock
Ayrshire
Italian Cafe. Good caff snacks of the Italian variety but truly delicious, excellent quality, homemade ice cream in a multitude of flavours (try a dollop of chocolate and a dollop of pistachio.. or hazel.. the strawberry is v. good too... oh dear. I'm getting over excited!
Eating a Marrocco's ice cream whilst staring at the sea is an essential Brighton experience.
On The Kingsway Beach Front (near King Alfred Centr)e.
If you need to absorb the excess of the night before, or stock up before a day in town, get a full breakfast here. This is Glasgow/Italian fusion cuisine at its best; no nonsense, honest and affordable. The Italian sausage is fantastic and the coffee is how it should be.
360 Great Western Road
www.cafecherubini.com/
A fantastic new restaurant in Golders Green, excellent Italian food, the best I have tasted for a long time, lovely relaxing atmoshpere with live music.
38 North End Road, London NW11 7PT.
Tel: 020 8458 6344
Opposite Golders Green tube.
Great for those who always want what everyone else has orderd, this Italian 'tapas' restaurant offers a tasty selection of small bites. Plates are priced around the £2/£3 mark, so you can easily get carried away. Best to go in a large group to make the most of the spicy meatballs, calamari and miniature pasta dishes.
115 Deansgate, Manchester M3 2NW
0161 831 9930
The most fantastic Italian Restaurant in Cardiff, probably in Wales. Casanova is run by four young Italians who are passionate about their food. Finally an Italian restaurant without Spaghetti Bolognese and garlic bread on the menu!
The food is wonderful, superbly cooked, beautifully presented and top quality.The kind of place where the most important thing is the quality of the food! I can highly recommend a visit here.
Cardiff 13 Quay street
Tel: 029 2034 4044
Modern Italian Pizzeria - great food, with lots of twists on the usual pizzas, including one based on a full English breakfast. Main one is just off Albert Square but a second has opened recently in Chorlton.
Croma Manchester 0161 237 9799
1-3 Clarence Street, Manchester, M2 4DE
Croma Chorlton 0161 881 1117
500 Wilbraham Road, Chorlton, Manchester, M21 9AP
www.cromamanchester.co.uk
Don't let the exterior put you off - the authentic taste of southern Italy awaits within. Highly recommended: the incredibly generous antipasto misto followed by an amazingly pneumatic calzone contadina. Excellent 'just like in Italy' coffee too - especially if accompanied by a grappa. Great ambiance, Italian mood music, friendly staff, excellent value. Be warned though - come here hungry and prepare to eat for England.
21 Friar Street, Worcester (01905 612211)
A 'modern' styled Italian restaurant serving very good old style Italian food. Good wine list too. And something unusual ... the restaurant is situated in what was the old Jack Lilley Triumph motorcycle building.
109 High Street, Shepperton TW17 9BL
Tel: (01932) 269006
A short walk up the high street from Shepperton station.
A bar and pizzeria next door to the Old Vic that stays open late into the night. Their links to the theatre are evident from all the autographed publicity mug shots of actors that hang from the walls and it's oddly enticing to pick out the celebs from these. Their oven knocks out superb thin crust pizzas throughout the night.
33 King St, BS1 4DZ;
tel: 0117 929 7712
Cheap and cheerful pizza and pasta restaurant on Stroud Green Road in Finsbury Park. Friendly people, massive pizzas and noisy as hell on weekend nights. Pizzas cost about seven quid. Avoid the horrible pub next door though.
131 Stroud Green Road, London N4 3PX; tel: 020 7263 2114;
www.pizzeria-pappagone.com
Nearest tube: Finsbury park
Caffé Caldesi is a great Italian restaurant (and cookery school) just off Marylebone High Street. They specialise in regional Italian food, so it isn't the sort of place to go for pizza and pasta (especially not pizza as they don't have any on the menu). The food I had when I went there was fantastic: Sardine alla Siciliana followed by Tagliata di Manzo.
The restaurant is relatively expensive with main courses costing about £15. A meal for two with wine would probably come to £70. Really fantastic
118 Marylebone Lane, London, W1U 2QF;
tel: 020 7935 1144; fax: 020 7935 8832;
nearest station: Baker Street or Regents Park;
www.caffecaldesi.com
Stock is undoubtedly the best Italian restaurant in central Manchester. Housed in the Victorian stock exchange, the room is spendid and one could easily think that something pretentious was about to be served up, but what comes out of the kitchen is worthy of nonna. They offer you the lightest pizzetta topped with pomodoro and torn basil. Every day they prepare home-made ravioli (walnuts and gorgonzola or spinach and ricotta are both fantastic), and there are great standards such as fegato alla Venetiana with polenta and vitello alla Milanese with spaghetti. Most days you can have a great set lunch for the odd amount of £13.30.
4 Norfolk St, just behind Market St;
tel: 0161 839 6644;
www.stockrestaurant.co.uk
This restaurant serves high-quality authentic Italian food and has an excellent wine list. It's open seven days a week - from 8am Monday to Saturday (Sunday opens later) and has tables outside, which is good if you have a dog! They are child friendly, service is of the highest standard and staff are super friendly. It was voted new best restaurant last year by The List and the interior is stunning.
103 George Street, next to Castle Street;
tel: 0131 225 1550;
www.centotre.co.uk
We ate at a lot of different restaurants while we were in Edinburgh, and they were all very good. At Zizzi however, the food was exceptional, flavours were cleverly combined, service was excellent, and it was open after many other restaurants had closed.
This was a real find for us, and we are used to really good food in our home city of Vancouver.
The Granary, 42/45, Queensferry Street, EH2 4RA (and other locations - check the webiste);
tel: 0131 225 6937; www.zizzi.co.uk
If you’re a foodie, find the ultimate deli: Valvonna and Crolla. This is for the serious gourmet. Squeeze past each other in the narrow tiled aisles and avoid the hanging salamis and hams overhead. Sample the succulent fat-laden mortadella. Be tempted by the transparent shavings of prosciutto freshly cut. Indulge your baser instincts in the creamy soft blue St Agur that slowly melts on the tongue to the gentle persuasion of Graham’s Vintage Port. And for a present to bring home? An estate bottled olive oil from Umbria? Some bulbs of roasted garlic from the Languedoc? And as for wine...
When the finest Italian food shop in the country only sells one fresh sausage, you know it's going to be good. Valvona & Crolla's Fonteluna doesn't disappoint. This is a solid, semi-cured sausage flavoured with chilli and fennel. As it is semi-cured it can be eaten raw as a salami or cooked. It can be cooked by either frying or grilling. As it is a dry sausage it really needs a wet sauce - I like it diced in a tomato sauce, thinly sliced and used as a pizza topping or with peppers.
It's not cheap at £4.95 for 265g but this is concentrated, strong tasting sausage with no water or cheap filler. Highly recommended! It would be a hard soul that would not come out of here the richer in taste and the poorer in pocket. Worth visiting on a Sunday morning, especially for their imported Indian peppercorns, or just to sit and have tea in their restaurant while the world muses and peruses. Blue Mountain coffee or green tea? Jalapenos peppers or habaneros?
Valvona & Crolla: 19 Elm Row, Edinburgh EH7 4AA
VinCaffè: 11 Multrees Walk, Edinburgh EH1 3DQ;
www.valvonacrolla.co.uk
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