There was no way I was going to leave my lovely work colleagues out of my birthday month celebrations back in March. With this in mind, I decided to organise a lovely lunch out, so I hit Google to try and find somewhere near our Soho-based office that we hadn’t yet tried but would be suitably swanky as befitted birthday month.
I settled on Obica, an Italian restaurant and mozzarella bar situated on Poland Street, near Oxford Circus tube station. It was all sleek modernism, with glossy black floors and ceilings, a wall of windows along one side and statement orange glass ceiling lights dangling at regular intervals for a splash of colour. White walls and pale wooden tables finished off the look and helped to enhance the open and airy feel of the restaurant; although it was quiet when we visited, there was still a lot of floor space, so I don’t imagine you would feel too crowded even at busier times.
There was no doubt in my mind that I would be ordering a pizza; I adore Italian style pizzas. I chose a pizza that didn’t have a tomato base; it had plenty of mozzarella, but was topped with mushrooms, black truffle oil and slivers of black truffle itself too. As those who love me know, I absolutely love black truffle, so this was like finding a 
goldmine! However, I made it even more truffly. I spotted on the specialist mozzarella menu that Obica offers a black truffle mozzarella; I asked whether I could have this on my pizza too for even more truffle goodness. The bemused waitress explained that the cheese was a stracciatella, so it was a softer cheese. I gave the thumbs up, said to put it on the pizza, and to finish off being totally Italian, ordered an aperol spritz to boot.
No word of a lie but this is quite possibly one of the best pizzas, if not the best pizza I have eaten. The dough was spot on, lovely and thin on the bottom, yet wonderfully puffy in the crusts and soft throughout; there is nothing worse than a burnt and over crisp Italian pizza base and crust. The truffle flavour was dreamy and permeated throughout every bite of my pizza. The oil sunk deep into the cheesy base, while the slices of black truffle themselves were delightfully large and flavourful. The extra cheese I put on top though was definitely a winning choice. It also had that fabulous black truffle tone, but was also a great, almost spreadable texture, so it worked really well with my crusts. Every element of the pizza was just spot on for me and it was brilliant to revel in one of my favourite flavours so absolutely.
My aperol spritz was served in a fancy tumbler, which I found unusual, however it was still a vibrant orange in colour 
and mixed well to produce a lovely lunchtime cocktail, with that tangy orange tone and a bit of fizz too.
However, stuffing myself with black truffle is not an inexpensive feat. My pizza alone was around £20, and it was an extra £3 to £4 to add the extra cheese on top. Add in the price of a London cocktail plus tip, and my one course lunch with one drink cost me £35 ish. It was worth every penny, however I’m sure you could bring the price down if you went for black truffle-less options!
A good Italian pizza executed well is the stuff dreams are made of, and I’ll be dreaming of this pizza for quite a while yet.
Travelling to Birmingham for a long weekend with the other half presented the ideal opportunity to sample some of the local specialities in terms of restaurants and bars, shunning the typical chains that I may ordinarily come across when exploring my native Essex or London. I was really looking forward to planning a few date nights in the best eateries Birmingham has to offer; I started by reserving a table for two on Saturday night at a stylish Italian restaurant called Piccolino, based in Oozells Square, the best name for a road I think I have ever heard.
complete with squashy black sofa seating hidden under matching black awning. Looking at the windows, I imagine this entire wall opens up during the summer months.
chunky, the chilli and lemon oil giving a great accompanying flavour which soaked nicely into the absorbent ciabatta. This was a fun sharing starter that allowed us to explore lots of flavour combinations and try something a bit different; I really enjoyed it but at £16.50, it’s certainly not the cheapest start to the meal you could have.
of super crispy bacon on top. This was fabulous; the problem I have with most carbonaras is the distinct lack of bacon pieces so the complete overload and generous scattering of pork here made me very happy and meant I could have some with most mouthfuls. As a dish I don’t treat myself to often, I really enjoyed it.
I had a lovely evening at Piccolino. Luckily, the music was a lot quieter once we reached our table, so Dan and I could have a friendly conversation without shouting across the table to be heard. The tables were nicely spaced apart too, and where we had a table for four, we had more space in general which is always appreciated. The restaurant was pretty busy, however once seated at the table, our waiter was attentive and helpful. I couldn’t say the same for the front of house staff, who I feel would have been content to leave Dan and I at the bar for the entirety of the evening. Price wise, it wasn’t too horrible, although Dan had already paid for our first round of drinks separately at the bar. Our meal plus my extra glass of wine came to just under £75 in total. On the whole though, I had a very enjoyable evening. I liked the classy and slightly upmarket tone of the restaurant, the fancy Italian fodder was a bit different to your usual pizza-pasta selection and reflected the elegant ethos Piccolino seeks to portray and once at the table, away from the hubbub and crowding by the door, it felt really intimate. Dan wasn’t too fussed by his starter or main meal, but was enthralled by his Aperol and blood orange sorbet dessert, so I’m going to say it was a thumbs up on the food front from him too. A great evening to kick-start our long weekend!
Despite being an Essex girl for my whole life, there are many patches of the county I have yet to explore when it comes to mu culinary adventures. One such patch is Basildon, an area I am certainly more interested in now the hubby and I have it in our sights as a potential destination for our next home. I will certainly require good quality eating hot spots nearby so a best friend’s hen do meal at local Italian restaurant Villagio, at the Festival Way recreation park, seemed like a good starting point.
Sitting across from another of my best friends, and a fellow food-lover, we decided the best course of action would be to share a couple of starters, to enable us to tuck into and try more food at, let’s face it, a restaurant we probably wouldn’t be visiting again in the immediate near future. Therefore, we opted for the garlic pizza bread with mozzarella and caramalised onions and a portion of meatballs. The garlic bread was really delicious; it was the size of a small 10 inch round pizza I reckon, with gooey creamy coloured blobs of the melted mozzarella generous and thickly covering the majority of the pizza, the deep brown caramlised onions cutting through the dense cheese with a sharp sweetness that worked really nicely. We all know this is a dream team flavour combo but it’s great that the ratio of cheese to onion was spot on too. The garlic was very subtle, so I would define this as more of a cheese and onion bread rather than a garlic bread; personally I would have liked it to have more of a punchy garlic kick however my bestie preferred the lower garlic payoff. I also liked the fact that the crust of the garlic bread was doughy and was thicker than you would typically get. I don’t much like it when you get a garlic bread or pizza crust that simply snaps like a poppadom; this is just flavourless and pointless in my opinion. So thumbs up for an actual crust.
With our garlic bread, we also had a white bowl of five meatballs, drenched in a chunky tomato and garlic sauce, sprinkled with grated cheese and served with two narrow grilled strips of ciabatta. The meatballs were lovely; fairly small but nice and meaty. They would have been dry without the sauce, however there was more sauce hidden in the dish than I first suspected, so it was nice to continually dunk both the meatballs, small bits of ciabatta and our garlic bread crusts in the sauce. It was a standard tomato sauce, thick and chunky with simple garlic tones. All in all, a good and simple start to the meal.
Parmesan combo, I ignored all good sense telling me no and I just ordered them. I’m glad I did though as they were yummy. The truffle was subtle but still a noticeable flavour and the cheese was another fun accent. The chips themselves were spot on too; I’m usually a chunky chip girl but these were so moreish is munched my way easily through the whole dish. Soft and fluffy on the inside and crunchy on the outside and loaded with the extra flavours. A real win-win side dish.
Since I was driving, I stuck to Villagio’s still lemonade to drink, which was refreshing and had a satisfying lemon twang. The service was pretty standard, although I think there were some new waiting staff serving our table, so sometimes getting the food out and to the right person was time-consuming and I kept having to ask for cutlery. For my three courses and two soft drinks, I paid £33.20 which is ok price wise. I was expecting it to be cheaper considering I didn’t drink for once, but I must have blown the saving on having a side and an extra course! I did enjoy my meal on the whole and it was a friendly little spot to find.
Birmingham may not be typically associated with romantic restaurants and date night hotspots, however when my husband Dan took me out for a meal on our recent visit up north (we are from Essex, most things are north to us), we found a restaurant that certainly ticks every box I have when it comes to a slap up meal out. Despite the whitewash of snow, we donned our glad rags and headed to Cielo, an Italain restaurant situated on the fabulously named Oozells Square, in sophisticated social scene Brindleyplace.
however the restaurant was absolutely alive with rich and hearty Italian laughter, large groups of family and friends dolled up, numerous waiting staff buzzing about as if charged with electricity. I instantly loved the vibe of the atmosphere; it was as if Cielo was celebrating the weekend itself.
which boasted of green apple, pink grapefruit and elderflower flavours. It was actually refreshingly fruity, yet soft and light to drink so it was ideal to cut through the carbohydrate and protein-laden feast we were planning. For starters, I chose the spaghetti carbonara, made with smoked pancetta, egg yolks, white wine, cream and grated Grana Padano cheese. Of course, I had extra Parmesan grated on top as well. Firstly, I loved the pasta bowl it came in. Traditionally a deep bowl, it was shaped to have one side lower than the other so it looked as if it was sitting on a slant, and almost provided an easy access point for me to eat my spaghetti from! The pasta itself was well cooked, which is good as I don’t like al dente pasta, and I loved the creaminess of the sauce paired with the salty mini cubes of pancetta. It was carbonara, but a carbonara of kings. The hubby went for prawns, which were lightly battered and served with a fresh mango-based salad and a sweet chilli dip. Although initially dubious about the mango, he soon started raving about the magical combination of flavours.
For my main course, I think I consumed one of the best dishes I have ever eaten out. By the size of this blog alone, I think we can all gather what a compliment this is. I ordered the tournedo rossini, which was basically an incredibly hefty and large fillet steak, a wonderful chunk of meat that I asked cooked medium rare. This was sat on a neat cylinder of sauteed garlic spinach, while on top of the angus beef was enriched duck liver and thin wafers of black truffle. The whole dish sat in a swimming pool of rich and dark red wine jus. This dish was undoubtedly all about the wow factor and I simply cannot praise it highly enough. The beef itself was sheer quality, thickly cut and buttery soft. This was a match made in heaven when dipped in the gorgeously deep and rich sauce, which had a slight sweet and balsamic-like tone to it. I was expecting pate for the duck liver, however I had a poke in the dim, atmospheric lighting of the restaurant and deduced that I thought it actually was liver. I hadn’t tried liver before so it was a learning curve, yet luckily it was only a small portion and it was sat on a square of olive oil drenched bread. When all covered in the jus as well, it was hard not to like. It was certainly meaty and a different texture to most meats, being slightly spongy in comparison, however it did not take away from the dish at all. I loved finding the shards of black truffle as I adore truffle, and anything black truffle in particular sends me wistfully 
daydreaming about my time in Florence, were food is the altar at which Florence locals worship and truffle is a much more normal foodstuff. Truffle works well with meat so I enjoyed pairing it with both the steak and the liver. The spinach added a vibrancy of green to the plate and I really enjoyed the heavy garlic hit encompassed in the buttery cooked leaves. All in all, this dish was something very special, and I could think about it all day long.
Dessert was always going to be a foregone conclusion. With our first two courses leaving us in raptures of Italian stupor, there was no way I was leaving without trying a portion of tiramisu. Boy it was lovely to look at and even greater to eat! Served in a neat circular stack, the dessert was wonderfully creamy with lashings of layered mascarpone and coffee-drenched sponge, the top dusted thoroughly with coco powder and the plate scattered with finely chopped nuts for added crunch. The tiramisu was silky, flavoursome and sweet; in other words utterly lovely. I even treated myself to a sneaky glass of dessert wine with it to help accentuate the sweetness further. Dan went all fresh and fruity with a brandsnap basket loaded with fresh fruit and served with sorbet.
amazing. The quality and standard of the dishes was unbelievably high and the portion sizes were really rather large too to leave us completely stuffed and waddling back to our hotel. The service was a little slow, but considering it was Saturday and we needed all the rest time we could muster in between courses, I wouldn’t say it was a problem in any way.
Getting more for your money?
When we bought the deal from Groupon, part of the online description listed the menu we would be able to choose from. It gave a selection of starters and main courses and also named a few desserts too, therefore both Charlotte and I already had inklings of what we wanted to pick for our meals. We also both wanted to do a main course and dessert rather than a main course and starter. However, we were thwarted before we had even begun, as when a waiter arrived to explain what we could choose from, he said that they had changed the available voucher options after we had purchased the deal, and we now had literally half the choice that we had previously. We had only three starters to pick from, pretty much a salad and a couple of pizzas for mains, and we were also told that the offer did not apply to desserts, but just for starters and main courses. As you can imagine, this left us feeling rather hard-done by as it wasn’t what we had signed up and paid for, and we would have preferred to have what was actually advertised. However we decided not to make a fuss and to try and enjoy our now limited meal as much as we could. We started by ordering our house wine options; I went for the white while Charlotte selected the red.
The main issue however was the length of the service. It was absolutely appalling. We waited an age for whatever we ordered, whether it was our wine at the beginning or our pizzas for our main meal. Everything was coming out of the kitchen and bar with an absolute snail’s pace, which quite frankly is ridiculous considering that pizza is a typically fast food to cook and serve. We waited so long for absolutely everything that we didn’t even attempt to buy over and above our voucher by having dessert; we weren’t even offered the menu After our pizzas, we literally waited and waited, then decided to just stand up and leave since all we’d consumed so far was included as part of our voucher. If the service had been better, we most likely would have had dessert and another round of drinks, but the service was slow, generally poor and definitely not worth the wait since the food is just average anyway. The bad service certainly cast a negative shadow over the evening; we even saw other couples nearby receive pizzas that were burnt or stone cold. With raised eyebrows, we decided to quit while we were ahead and go and get a concluding drink elsewhere.
Getting More for your Money?
For starters, I chose the giant meatballs, as let’s face it, you really can’t go wrong with meatballs. The meatballs consisted of minced veal, beef, pork and pancetta, squished with fennel and parsley for good measure and served with a ladle-full of tomato-based pomodoro sauce on top. When the dish arrived, it featured four of the meatballs, served on a white rectangular plate, the chunky sauce pooling on top of the meat. To be honest, I’ve seen larger meatballs and these ones to me just seemed a normal size, so a bit of fake advertising there. After accepting some extra parmesan to be grated over my meal, I tucked in. The meatballs had a great flavour and the herbs were not overpowering in the slightest, providing just the merest of background notes. The meat was certainly the front and foremost flavour, accented by the very light and juicy tomato pomodoro sauce. The texture of the meatballs was quite fine and a little on the dry side, but that again was soon remedied by the sauce. Overall, a nice little starter to get the meal going.
I decided to go traditional Italian with my dessert by picking the tiramisu. When it arrived at the table, I was so disappointed it was unreal. Part of the reason I love tiramisu is the fact it is indulgently creamy yet light, and that the coffee-drenched sponge fingers cut through the mascarpone to create a wonderful concoction of mild cream and strong coffee. What I received at Prezzo was more like a structure than a dessert, with three sponge fingers, merely speckled with soaked coffee rather than properly absorbing it all, arranged to form a small pyramid shape. The luscious creaminess I was expecting was instead a rather thin layer in the centre of the pyramid, a little more spread on top to dust cocoa powder over. For me, this was a massive disappointment. I know tiramisu can vary greatly between restaurants, however I have always enjoyed it and it has always been creamy and coffee-fuelled. This version however certainly did not tick my boxes, and I was lusting after Vick’s sticky toffee pudding with complete abandon. My sweet tooth was left unsatisfied.
The Discount Deal Menu 