We were famished. Italian food we dreamt of. Of a good meal, we were denied.
What an arrival. Wonderfully decorated tables with red chequered table cloths, reminiscent of an invitation from a caring Italian grandmother that wants to feed you the finest of her cooking....What a great start.
A lovely lady approaches us with our cards. My, it all looked delicious, how were we to choose between tuna steak, octopus pasta and rabbit; all the wonders of the culinary world before us. What does one do in this situation? Asks the waitress for a recommendation. The knowledgable waitress recommended tuna steak for two of us, garnished with only a salad so we were guided towards roast potatoes in red wine.
Roast potatoes in red wine? Is this what God eats? We wanted to eat like Gods.
Our companion was recommended black pasta with prawns.
Black pasta? Is this what millionaires eat in Dubai? We wanted to eat like millionaires in Dubai.
A lengthy wait followed indeed. As we are patient, kind and understanding, this posed no issue for us. Surely dishes so refined and rich may need some time, surely each pasta strand is coated with sauce, one pasta strand at a time and the tuna we were about to eat, currently being taken from its mineral rich water tank.
40 minutes and 3 cigarettes later, a dry tuna steak on a plate is coming out of the restaurant doors. Perhaps the waitress was aiming for the bin with that failed food. However, the plate of dry tuna went not to the bin, but in front of our faces, on our table.
In my dreams, I saw a succulent tuna steak, red and moist, falls apart as soon as a knife touches it. In reality, I saw a slab of grey, dry tuna that I could have purchased from a tin, from Lidl, for not 54zl but 5. At least Lidl adds a little sunflower oil to their tuna. That day I decided that I will not have an alcoholic beverage. I wish I did, not only to cheer myself up but to help the dry tuna steak go down my throat.
Let’s not forget the red wine potatoes. What about them? Red wine? Where? A potato cut up and thrown into an oven. Also salt? Where? Nowhere to be found. I don’t have children yet, but I’m sure a 5 year old would be capable of cutting a potato and putting it into an oven. I didn’t want to drink alcohol, but I did expect a small taste of red wine in the potatoes that I had. Perhaps if I was an ant, I could taste the red wine. Unfortunately, I am not an ant, an ant couldn’t write this review.
Prawn pasta. 6 prawn pasta is more of an accurate description. Black pasta. Without taste. A few chopped up chillies and some olive oil. Perhaps a 16 year old boy who wants to impress his crush could cook her this for dinner, attempting to be fancy. That might be sweet and understandable, yet an authentic Italian restaurant, serving this for 38zl, not so impressive. I’m not a chef, but I could recommend at least some garlic. At least some taste, pasta with butter I can eat when I have no money left at the end of the month to pay my bills.
Upon the lack of leaving a tip for the waitress, the atmosphere turned sour. She wasn’t the lovely lady she was at the beginning. Sour like a lemon. Not a lovely Sicilian lemon though, more like a lemon from Lidl as there is nothing Italian about this place.
We left full but dissatisfied and our wallets were certainly empty.More
