Posts tagged garlic bread

Lasagne, garlic bread starter + drink             £15

I’m beginning to suspect that I only like Italian food if it’s home cooked.  And by that I mean cooked at my home.  By me.  Every Italian restaurant I go to seems to make a lame effort with their flavours.  So in visiting Don Giovannis restaurant I thought I’d give them a chance and order a relatively infallibly classic from their lunch menu: the good old lasagne.

It was a birthday celebration and there were many of us out, so let me include the caveat that many people enjoyed their various meals and a good time was had by all.  But far be it from me to allow that kind of joviality and good time-having to get in the way of an opportunity to munch and rant.

Quite simply, the lasagne was too cheesy and soupy.  It was piping hot, which is fair – although I did have to wait approximately 18 hours for it to cool down to a human-consumable temperature.  But the rich textures of beef, cheese and pasta were quite literally drowned by cheese and tomato soup.  The meal was rapidly losing structural stability and sinking slowly into the ocean of orangey waves.

Some people may go for this.  Some may even purport that this is what lasagne is all about, that it is basically a soup dish with hints of meat and cheese hidden within the tomatoey mush.  Not I.  Furthermore, anticipation of potential blandness drawn from experience with my previous visit to Don’s led me to timidly petition a trace of garlic to be added to my dish.  Perhaps I should have overstated my case as if any trace was actually added, it went undetectably by.

Nevertheless, the bathrooms were clean and spotless – an excellent method of determining the quality of a restaurant – various other dishes were enjoyed around the table, certainly tasting some led me to determine which dish to try next time, the staff were friendly and accommodating and seamlessly covered up an order gaffe by telling us the first two incorrect garlic breads were “on the house”.  The location is bustling yet accessible and there were many smiling faces at the end of the meal.

I look forward to another visit but also to choosing a different meal…