Posts Tagged ‘italian food’

With Elina back in Leeds, I decided to take her out for dinner and despite my general dislike for Italian food, with Jamie’s Italian being one of the few restaurants in Leeds I haven’t eaten at, we settled on that as a venue.

You can’t book, so you just have to turn up and wait. We were told on arrival that the wait was around 20-25 minutes. We were handed a pager and sent to the bar area, which was too small for the number of people waiting, but otherwise fine.

The wait ended up being around 15 minutes and we were soon seated and ordering. The food was good, and served fast, but I felt we were generally a little rushed so they could turn over the table. Overall, it was a perfectly pleasant dining experience, but nothing special.

With the anniversary of Arthur Fonzarelli having arrived once again, I organised a birthday meal at Piccolino. As it happened Fonze turned up late to his own birthday shin dig so we ended up eating the main course without him, but never the less we didn’t let his tardiness spoil our fun.

The restaurant was a reasonably up market place and this was evident from the pitiful amount of change I received back from my £10 note having ordered myself and Elina a drink.

The staff were friendly though it was sometimes a little hard to get their attention. Some of them didn’t seem to speak very good English which I always find a good sign in restaurants as it can often be because they’re actually from the country that the restaurant’s food style is based on, though of course equally it could be a placebo effect.

The food was nice, the portions were small but I didn’t come away from the meal still feeling hungry so no concerns there. I had the crispy duck for main which wasn’t actually that crispy but the sauce was excellent and duck is a fantastic meat in general. Piccolino’s real strength seems to be in it’s desserts however.

I enjoyed the meal, but given the above average bill which didn’t translate into above average food, I think I would pick one of the multitude of great restaurants in the city centre rather than heading back there any time soon.