I was dragged against my will to this unfortunate restaurant by over-enthusiastic british friends, who have clearly not learnt enough about Italian cooking. Italian food is more often than not very cheap to do, and therefore, as an Italian, I am always outraged seeing how disproportionate the prices can be in Italian restaurants abroad. I presume that it's because of the fame italian cooking has achieved internationally, and because of the fact that only 60 million out of 6 billion people are italian, that outside Italy you can get any sort of expensive crap, labelled as "Italian". And people will probably like it just because they presume they are meant to: it's Italian food, afterall! Not so. Italian cooking has traditionally evolved from the lower classes diet, therefore it is rarely over-complicated and requiring expensive ingredients (I find vegetables and some cheese much cheaper in Britain than in Italy...). That said, one cannot simply accept to pay 6 for a luke-warm, microwaved lasagna, not when the ingredients are worth less than a pound altogether and are assembled so poorly. I was served a risotto which didn't look like anything of what I am used to at home, and let's be fair: a poorly cooked punch of rice plus a couple of sun-dried tomato and a few other bits of vegetables for 8? The restaurant is excessively elegant, a quality that my fellow country-men regard with suspition: it might mean that they need to compensate for bad quality food. If they make good food at earnest prices, people won't care if the tables and chairs are not matched, I won't go on about the food, I think I've already said enough. I just want to enphasize that this rant does not come out of national pride, but of sympathy. I'd like everyone in the world to be able to taste REAL Italian food at adequate prices -that said, you'd be much better off trying to do something at home: Jamie Oliver is the best help one could find ;)
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a). negative.
b). positive.
a).