Saturday night we had a fab night with friends but unfortunately the restaurant we chose to eat in certainly was not “fab”. It’s my first post which has a really negative opinion and experience, it does sadden me to write it but I want to share honest and real experiences with you. So here we go, we ate  and I use ate in a very loose term, at a local independent Italian restaurant…

Giovannis is a well-known independent Italian which I had heard good things about, and with my love of pizza I was very much looking forward to eating there.

On looking at the menu I was surprised at how large it was and my first thought was “they can’t possibly cook all this from scratch.” For starter I had Funghi Alla Provinciale,  mushrooms in a tomato and garlic sauce, at best I can only describe this as a tin of mushrooms mixed with a tin of tomatoes. The rest of my party had:
Deep Fried Whitebait – well you can’t really go wrong with that even if is bought in
Tonno E Fagioli,  tuna fish and beans – described as tin of tuna mixed with few beans
Insalata Caprese, italian soft cheese with sliced tomato, oregano and olive oil – this actually looked really nice and was enjoyed

The problem really came with my main course. I ordered an Americana Pizza, very simple but my favourite. When it arrived it was the size of a standard dinner plate but no lie had only 5 small pieces of “spiced italian salami”. When I queried this they seemed amazed I should want more pepperoni but took it away to add more. They then returned to say they would cook me a fresh one. 15-20 minutes later I still had no food and the rest of the party had finished their meal. At this point I did not want my pizza.

The rest of my part had:
Pizza Giovanni’s, ham, mushrooms, spiced salami, garlic, tomato and mozzarella cheese – toppings certainly weren’t generous on this either
Cannelloni Ripieni, home-made fresh layers of pasta, rolled and stuffed with meat sauce, cheese and oven baked – looked like it could have been bought from the supermarket
Scaloppine Di Vitello Alla Bordoles, slices of veal cooked with bacon, onions and mushrooms in a red wine sauce – described as bland and tasteless.

Our overall impression of Giovannis was that nothing was cooked fresh, and it was more than likely all bought in. On a positive note the waiting staff were very polite and friendly, however this didn’t make up for the disappointment of the food.

It is a real shame that restaurants still feel they can get away with serving this type of food and a disappointment that an independent restaurant wasn’t even as good as large pizza food chains.

As an aside I would like to thank food4um.com for adding my Yorkshire Pudding post as “Food Post – Blog of the Day” on 3 December.