Preston Street is another little restaurant area in Brighton, a great little place to just go into town for if you live westwards, or head slightly out of town for otherwise. A nice mixture of restaurants, combined with a little nightlife, makes Preston Street a great place for an evening out. Casalingo is one of the cheaper restaurants in the area, and, although it specialises in upmarket Italian food, the prices are quite low. Consequently, the quality isn't too brilliant, and neither is the decor. A couple of slight adjustments, though, and Casalingo could be one of the nicer restaurants in the area; shame it isn't quite there yet!
Casalingo is, surprisingly, one of the few Italian restaurants in the Preston Street area; with that many restaurants around, I'm surprised there aren't more of your typical, bog-standard Italian pizzerias and the like. In either case, Casalingo is much more than just a pizzeria: they specialise in Italian 'delicacies' and thus are going for more of the specialist dishes than your average Italian restaurant. These are all very interesting, but my party all noticed a distinct lack of any kind of flavour. It seems there's a reason these dishes are all under a tenner!
It's a shame, because I would gladly have paid more for higher quality food, and I felt that wasn't too far out for the location or restaurant to be slightly more upmarket. Offering upmarket food at discount prices often worries me, and in this case it has also affected the decor: traditional Italian decor that is a little on the crumbling and stained side. This whole place could do with a spruce up, and the prices are currently low enough and the ambition here high enough to warrant a slight price increase. This little change could make all the difference for Casalingo: as it is now, I'm not rushing to go back!
Casalingo doesn't quite seem to have its priorities in order, and the food (the one thing that shouldn't) suffers for it. A look at how they're doing things might do this restaurant some favours: as it is, it's perfectly fine, but all just a bit bland. read more