I FORGET who it was that said life is too short to drink bad wine, but it wouldn't surprise me if they were Italian. A bad Italian vino is hard to find, and usually a one-off. The same, sadly, cannot be said for Italian restaurants. Scotland is sti
ll stuffed with mediocre trattorias churning out the standard pasta'n' garlic bread dishes, while posh pizza parlours appear to have embarked upon a prodigious breeding programme in recent years.
Amarone, a stone's throw from Glasgow's George Square, aims to bridge the gap and move Italian cooking into the 21st century. A stylish space in the basement of the old RSAMD building, it has an eclectic, modern menu that combines traditional Italian fare (pasta and pizza both make significant appearances) with more adventurous dishes such as scallops and saltimbocca.
Unsurprisingly, it has attracted something of a following. Come here on a Saturday night and you won't be able to move for west coast hipsters. The place regularly attracts Old Firm footballers and their WAGs, turning it into a veritable fashionista's haven. So far, so Glasgow, but what about the actual fare?
As you might expect in a restaurant named after one of Italy's most exclusive and unusual wines, Amarone has a varied and entirely Italian wine list that features several amarones, along with a healthy selection from regions such as Lombardy, Abruzzi, Puglia and Sardinia. Balking at the prices of a bottle of amarone (around the £40 mark), we opted for Angimbe IGT Cusumano, a deliciously flowery Sicilian with a sunny golden tinge to it.
It went well with my starter, the scallops wrapped in pancetta – capesante pancetta – (£6.45). It was a triumph; crispy, flavourful and not overly salty pancetta wrapped round meaty, seared scallops. It was a great combination. My friend Anna's prosciutto di Parma (£6.75) was another successful partnership – delicate slivers of prosciutto accompanied by ripe, juicy figs and a drizzle of wild honey. It was a fragrant, elegant dish, just perfect for a summer evening.
Before I go on I should say that our starters really did promise great things. Perhaps that is why we were so bitterly disappointed with what came next. Anna's veal, or nodino di vitello (£18.95), was curious on several fronts. When we were ordering, the waiter asked her how she would like her veal cooked, saying that she should order it as if it were a steak. This she did, opting for medium rare and then going on to specify that she would like it pink in the middle.
While this was going on I happened to notice on the menu that it listed sauces that one could order along with the veal, at an extra charge of £2. Having taken our order, and our menus, the waiter came back and informed Anna that the veal "came with" a sauce, gave her a selection to choose from, and asked which one she would like. She chose mustard and mushroom, unaware that there was a charge. To me, this seemed a little underhand. The veal did not "come with" a sauce. To say so implied it was inclusive when it was not, a point we now could not check because the menus had been whisked away.
No matter, we thought, the dish would be worth the bumped up, not inconsiderable cost of £20.95. Sadly, it was not. Nor was it medium rare. Well done would be a more apt description. Certainly there was no hint of the pink that had been specified. Instead it was large and tough, with almost all of its flavour cooked out of it. Just as well, then, that the sauce had been ordered, as it would have been a dry and arduous dish without it. The controversial sauce was merely mediocre, however, while the dish of flabby sautéed potatoes went cold so quickly we were suspicious as to how hot they had been in the first place.
My pennette porcini (£9.45) was little better. Promising a mix of porcini and woodland mushrooms in a creamy sauce made with truffle oil, it arrived boasting an industrial lorryload of button mushrooms, with a few dog-eared porcinis tucked down the sides. The sauce wasn't bad – a little cloying, perhaps; nothing special. But it was hard to get a handle on it with so many bland mushrooms to contend with.
Uninspiring though these dishes were, however, we couldn't get rid of them. Despite having been put in a booth right next to one of the waiter's stations, and attempting to catch his eye on several occasions, it was nearly 20 minutes after we'd put our forks down before someone came and cleared our plates. It was an unacceptably long wait.
We shared a just OK strawberry pannacotta (£4.25) but to be honest, our hearts were no longer in it. The sloppy service, the unloved food, the flagrant disregard for what the customer wanted – to me it seemed the distinct opposite of what a good Italian restaurant should stand for. After the tease of excellent starters, which demonstrated what could be done here if more attention were paid to the details, it all went rapidly downhill.
Oh, and by the way, if you're considering a trip here and basing your budget on the menu on the website, bear in mind that it's out of date. The dishes are mostly the same, but the prices have all gone up. It's a pity the same can't be said for the quality.
Still. At least the wine was good.
The full article contains 948 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
