Ciao Bella

A problem with many neighbourhood Italian restaurants is that they're really terrible, as b and I once discovered in a city that shall remain nameless where we were taken to some friends' favourite Italian which was always reliable... hmmm, always reliable to serve rubbery, chewy mozarella of a kind that I had genuinely never encountered up until that day, anyway. Exxie ain't a whole lot better really, with a whole load of Italian restaurants which serve up food which is basically only half as nice as fresh pasta from Tesco, and garlic bread made with margarine in another place that shall remain nameless.

Anyway, all this is a longwinded way of saying that I am very lucky that my local Italian is Ciao Bella, a lovely place on Lamb's Conduit Street, where one can sit outside even on brisk evenings thanks to their heaters (it's OK as long as you don't own your own heaters, I believe), enjoying the lovely nibbles of breadsticks, queen black and green olives, and big hunks of top quality parmigiano. And the best bit is that all of that part of the meal, which amounts to a luscious starter, is free. Actually the best bit is that it's delicious, but being free is a bonus. The prices all round are very fair - the same you'd pay in Exxie or anywhere else - with pizzas at about six or seven pounds, and they are not insubstantial things. I go for the Ciao Bella, which has tomato, mozzarella, aubergine and an egg; topped off with some chillis it's a comfort-food winner that I could eat pretty regularly through the winter. This is a restaurant to skip lunch for, and when you have those hunger pangs in the middle of the day, you just need to think of the parmigiano in the evening, a class of red wine, and then the satiation of pizza.