Giotto

vegimari

Uninspiring 26th May 2009

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Quaint as this restaurant may be, and despite the friendly accommodating staff and the just about reasonable price, I left Giotto with mixed feelings about the quality of the food. 4 of us dined here midweek. The restaurant was quite busy, but we were found a table within 10 minutes.

Two in the party had vegetarian/vegan (minus cheese) pizzas and were very happy with them. One had quite dull vegetarian pasta. I had a mushroom risotto, and, although it wasn’t the worst I’ve had - some of the Prague restaurants score 1 out of 5 for this dish – I don’t think I’ve had a poorer one in the UK. The tiny black specks may have been mushroom; impossible to tell by the look or the taste, with any degree of certainty. The long grain rice and a short cooking time didn’t allow the dish to develop the characteristic creamy texture or the rich flavours of a risotto cooked with carnaroli or arborio. I would say that what I had was rice boiled in water rather than stock (perhaps fortunately for this vegetarian as I had forgotten to ask whether chicken stock wasn't used), to which had been added reconstituted dried mushroom flakes. Very disappointing!

However, when I saw dishes being taken to other tables, such as prawn salad starter consisting of half a dozen Tesco once-frozen prawns with two pieces of iceberg lettuce, or thee slices of finely sliced melon naked on the plate, without further garnish, I was reminded of some of the unimaginative restaurants to be found in busy tourist locations in the major Italian cities. I think, on the whole, that we chose fortuitously. I may go back to roll the dice once more but I’d be much more likely to try another restaurant in the area.