New Tastes...

La Piazza, Goose Green

Last night, I went for a meal at La Piazza, a fairly new Italian restaurant in Goose Green. There were six of us - Tasha, Abi, Dave, Em, Smeed and I -and it was my suggestion, so I was hoping we wouldn't be disappointed!

We sat down and ordered a bottle of white wine to share between four of us, and Abi and Dave got a beer and glass of house red wine. It is a piattini place (basically Italian tapas, so all small dishes) and we agreed to choose one dish each and share them all, as well as to order their set menu for two, which had a variety of different dishes across three courses, and included a free drink. All the dishes come out as and when they're ready, so it's quite a good concept when it's a group of people dining.

My choice of dish was pork belly casserole served with lentils and chorizo, which was amazing! Between us we also had chicken and chorizo skewers, cheese arancini (rice balls in breadcrumbs), breaded mozzarella, tomato gnocchi, prawn linguine, and a pepperoni and chili pizza. On the set menu we began with bread, mixed meats and cheese, olives and a mixed salad, followed by spicy sausage and sauteed potatoes and calamari with garlic mayonnaise, and finally tomato, spinach and cheese ravioli and meatballs in tomato sauce.  

Everything was delicious, I particularly enjoyed the arancini, which were beautifully made and very flavourful. I am glad we chose a few of the dishes off the normal menu to be a bit more adventurous, as the set menu is mainly the staple Italian classics which I enjoyed but wouldn't have wanted only them. We had tea and coffee afterwards, and with a tip it came to £21 each, which was an absolute bargain for the amount of food that we got. The service was great; our waiter was very friendly and explained everything clearly to us, it is just a shame that there were only us and two other parties in there, so the atmosphere was a little quiet, not that we minded as we were all chattering away. I would recommend it to people in the area as it really is a lovely little Italian, that is clearly still relatively unheard of!