Ambiance: 5.5 / 10 Stark is the first impression and bright! Cripes, is it BRIGHT!! One feels…read morelike you're in a fish bowl on display. We were there for dins and thought it was day. Loud too, even though there weren't many fellow diners. It's a small room and everyone can hear everyone (WOW, someone at the next table was talking about their affair). We thought acoustics would be disastrous if it was better patronised and word on the grape vine is that this place has re-established itself from a café to an upmarket Italian restaurant so, when full it would be more like a cafeteria cacophony.
Winelist: 4 / 10 Oh dear! An Italian inspired restaurant with no Italian wines?? A few extra marks for supporting locavore but, a Barolo, Sangiovese or at least a Vermentino would complement the intended restaurant influence. Even the local wines that monopolise the list are main stream and average.
Service: 6 / 10 Call me old fashioned but, if one is expecting 'upmarket' Darlings, an old girl and my professional counterparts notice things. Serve from the left - clear from the right; unless 2 patrons next to each other are in conversation, clear only when everyone has finished, don't reach across in front of your patron, top up the vino, top up the water, don't hover, staff should intimately know the dishes and wine, etc etc. And of greatest importance, they should look like they actually enjoy their job. Need I say more about 1923?
Cuisine: 5 / 10 And only just a 5, saved by the quality of the cuisine, not the selection of the cuisine. The kitchen does good with the almost boring and average dishes listed. For a restaurant that's positioned itself at 'upmarket' Italian it's not genuine Italian. There's no signature dish, no scaloppine (veal), Nothing chocolate for dessert (Italian sacrilege). Nothing that leaps out from the menu that shrieks "PICK ME, PICK ME".
Value for what you get: 5 / 10 Expensive. Better value elsewhere.
The deal maker or breaker; would I go back? No. This place has pitched itself at the ranks of the likes of Assaggio, Jamie's Italian, Chianti and Ambrosini's. It comes nowhere near this standard. We were hoping the trek up the hill would be worth it but, it wasn't. We came back down the hill to one of the aforementioned for dessert, coffee and Moscato.
25.5 out of 50.
Dame Dine Alot.