As I mentioned on Friday, this past month has seen me eating in a lot of Italian restaurants. I’ve travelled the country, from South Shields to Birmingham, Hull to Liverpool.
Ten restaurants featured in the category of Best Team, that I was judging for the awards. I looked at not only how they interacted with me and my date, but also how they interacted with other customers and for me, just as importantly, each other. We experienced such good customer service, and witnessed slick, smooth professional service as well as feats such as one venue more than capably dealing with three hen parties in one night.
Whilst you can see the full list of winners here, including the winners in my own category, I also wanted to talk a little about the food. Because the restaurants nominated for service, often offered some of the most delicious food I’ve had in the UK – I’ve never felt my hands tied so much that I couldn’t share some of the dishes with you.
So, to make up for it, I’ve put together a list of my favourite dishes over the whole month and where you can get them. I could rave about so many of the dishes, but in the interests of not creating a blog post so long it’s impossible to read, I’ve kept it to one per venue.
So, let’s begin at the beginning, with the starters.
First up, Avalanche’s simple cheese starter, the trio di mozzarella featured buffalo, smoked and butter infused mozzarella, all served with fresh bread and olive oil was delicious and surprisingly for something so simple, our favourite dish at that venue. The butter infused mozzarella in particular was almost fought over.
At the glamorous Cielo in Birmingham, one of the specials caught my eye in particular, the scallops with bacon. It was heavenly and no wonder they won the title of Best Restaurant Over 50 Seats. Very well deserved.
Over in Yorkshire, the team at Prego were very much showing Brighouse how it’s done with a selection of specials and it was this delicious crispy oxtail, in oxtail broth with a poached egg, that had me sending pictures to Mr GFB back home in excitement. A fantastic hidden gem.
Moving onto the mains, Lucia Bar & Grill in Harrogate provided on of the most tender lamb rump dishes I’ve ever sampled. Juicy, it surrendered to the knife easily, and had a delicious chargrilled flavour to it that had me wishing I could sample it all over again.
Onto another specials menu at Al Porto in Hull, it was the duck with orange that had me enthralled, the duck was both tender and crispy, the sauce sweet, but not overpowering and served with a deliciously creamy mashed potato.
Amalia in Liverpool proved that quality doesn’t have to come with a steep price tag, and their carbonara with its absolutely perfect pasta was well worth the price of the train ticket alone. I’m already putting a revisit on the cards as they both won my category and the Best Pizza category too.
As we delve into desserts, it was the Meadowhall Shopping Centre and Caffe Massarella, that wowed with it’s cake selection, from tiramisu to Italian trifle, the sweets change regularly, but the staff are more than happy to go through them all with you (more than once if you really can’t decide).
La Bella Vita in Garforth’s limoncello cheesecake was delightful, the right balance of sharp and sweet, with thin sliver of lightly wobbly jelly on top of rich buttery cheesecake and crisp base.
Again at Pasta di Piazza in Birmingham, my date and I experienced their summer fruit cheesecake (I am a bit of a cheesecake lover, I must admit), a sweet, creamy, buttery confection, balanced with gently sharp berries.
And finally, Italian Retro in South Shields was another hidden gem of a venue, and though my date and I shared dessert as we were so full from the other delicious courses, I selected their blueberry Eton mess with it’s ginger base. Divine.
I don’t know about you, but even mentally revisiting those courses makes me yearn for an espresso and a lie down.
The whole experience was a lot of fun, we got to visit some fantastic venues, ones that we will be returning to. We’re so lucky to have such venues available to us in England, and I suspect next year will be even bigger.
But for now, even I must admit that I’m feeling a little pasta’d out at the moment.
Maybe next month?
