Category: Le Budget (£)
At the end of the month,when I am desperately waiting to get paid, I tend to make good use of my Taste London Card. One of these monthly returning occasions brought me to Raffaello,a newish Italian restaurant in Southwark,which is already pretty cheap and you get 50% off food when in possession of a Taste London card.
You want to send Gordon Ramsey there for his show Kitchen Nightmares straight away. Not because the food is bad,it was actually quite nice,but because they appear to have no idea what they are doing and you think someone should tell them. When we arrived the restaurant was basically empty except for 2 tables. And it was cold! Cold not only in the sense that the heating could have been turned on higher but also the design of the place seemed ‘cold’. Probably works well somewhere in Sicily but not so well for chilly and rainy days in London. The lighting was far too bright and the radio played some annoying music interrupted by advertisement. I don’t want to listen to Sheila’s Wheels songs while I am eating,thank you very much!
The next obstacle was the wine –I liked the fact that they offered the two cheapest red wines in a 500 ml carafe (as we (try to) never drink a whole bottle on Mondays),but,as the rather confused looking waiter told us,they ran out of the two cheapest red wines. So. I don’t like that. A restaurant should never run out of the TWO cheapest wines. We nicely asked the waiter if we could have one of the other wines by the carafe (mind you,you could order them by glass,so there should be no reason not to also serve them by carafe). But the waiter was adamant that this is not possible. Not possible? Am I not supposed to be the king as a customer? (and we are not talking unreasonable request here!)
Now I really felt like in a Gordon Ramsey TV show and I started playing difficult customer. In the end the poor waiter got the manager and we had the whole discussion all over again. Finally he gave in (I can be very persuasive) and we got one of the more expensive wine by the carafe for the price of the cheaper one. Even though I cherished my victory I felt really sorry for waiter and manager alike. They were very nice and friendly people but they seemed terribly lost –they obviously just had no idea how to run a restaurant.
Thank god they did not do too badly on the food front:we ordered the pizza with prosciutto,rucola and cherry tomatoes (8.50). This pizza was one of the more expensive ones on the menu,while the cheapest were ranging around 4-5 pounds –these are really nice prices for London. And the pizza was rather enjoyable with nice thin crust and the right amount of rucola and prosciutto.
The Insalata Tricolore (6.50) was less convincing. It came,as advertised,with a big piece of buffalo mozzarella which was very good indeed. But then the whole dish got screwed by the utterly tasteless,pale tomatoes which were bad even for England standards. The avocado was not ripe either. And then these sad ingredients were placed on a heap of salad remarkably resembling the Tesco mixed salad for 1 pound variant. I don’t want to be pedantic,but an insalata tricolore is supposed to contain the colours of the Italian flag –mozzarella,tomatoes and avocado (=three colours) and there is no purple anywhere in the Italian flag as far as I am aware.
If you live or work in this area,Raffaello is worth checking out for a quick and cheap lunch and I somehow really want them to do well. Raffaello does not quite have the dinner atmosphere unless it’s the end of the month of course. Then one cannot be too choosy…
- Food: 4.5/10
- Ambiance: 4/10
- Service: 6/10
- Value for money:6/10
- Chances of returning: 5%
- Verdict: food is decent value for money
Raffaello Italian Restaurant &Delicatessen
202-206 Union Street,Southwark London
tel. (020)7261 0209
Oh dear,Raffaello’s decor does look stark –the wooden furniture looks almost Unitarian! Well,at least you got your wine.
Yes thank god I got the wine! otherwise the review would have been not that kind…