294 Westbourne Grove,
London,
W11 2PS
0872 148 0238
The ViewLondon Review
As unappealing as the thought of a factory producing wine may be, it does nonetheless suggest this Italian eaterie's main strength: its wine list.
With a broad range of prices and countries covered, it's possible to find something for pretty much any price or palate, and even the inexpensive bottles are very good – much better than you'd find for an equivalent price pretty much anywhere else.
However, if wine isn't really your thing, or you don't care much what you drink, there's little other reason to come. At around the £10 mark, the pizzas are neither large nor very exciting, and could certainly do with more flavour (and cheese!).
The steak was delicious – second time around, anyway, after the first had been returned, and the risotto was disappointingly bland. The spicy chicken salad came with generous amounts of breast meat as well as potato wedges, but the kitchen seemed to have replaced the promised guacamole with sour cream, something of an unwelcome surprise for any diner aiming to avoid dairy products.
Service was polite but a little brusque – though we were a large group, to be fair, with all the delays and difficulties that incurs – and there's not much wrong with the space, which is modern and light.
However, it's hard to avoid the feeling that the food is something of an afterthought to the wine list, and that not much thought has really gone into the menu at all. It's not expensive per se, but it's certainly a little overpriced for what you actually get, which would be more appropriate at a pub with Italian pretensions. Still, when you save this much on wine, who's counting?
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