We're beginning to explore the restaurant scene in Surbiton and, having spotted an attractive looking place - The Italian Taste - on the main street, decided to book in for lunch. We get there spot-on 1.30pm and it's pretty much full. We are given a table near the front window (not directly by it), and menus. It's nice having a chatty, charming waitress - except that she's being chatty and charming at another table, and it takes ages to flag someone else down to take our drinks order!
House wine is just £17, but we push the boat out with an Orvieto at £24, plus some sparking water - well it is another very hot day. The menu has a good range of interesting starters, pasta dishes priced as starters or mains, plus some classic dishes. We dithered over our choice and had nearly decided when the waitress came over with a Specials board to make things more difficult.
We share starters - tiger prawns (3) in a garlic and chilli sauce, and a pizza sized garlic bread with mozzarella - covered in raw garlic. Both very good. For mains, B went with the Dover sole off the specials board, at £31 the most expensive thing available. This came in a very rich butter and onion sauce and was absolutely lovely - "heavenly" she said. I had thought about the sea bass fillets but as B was having fish, went for the saltimbocca a la Romana instead. This was rich with a strong sauce, a total contrast from B's. Good but perhaps not so special. Both dishes came with half-roast potatoes, broccoli, carrots and beans, but we also ordered a rocket and parmesan salad, as that was more suited to the weather.
The place had almost emptied out by 2.15pm, so the background music was more noticeable - Frank, Dean and Bing singing the classics as slowly as they could. We did eventually get the chatty waitress - the other one had been friendly and welcoming too.
We had a second bottle of Orvieto - and of water. And some complimentary limoncello. It being a Wednesday we get the £10 a head reduction from Rishi; service is just 10%, though quite reasonably charged on the total before the discount. That made the total up to £115, very good value indeed; and could have managed to spend a lot less. Definitely worth another visit.
Second visit with friends S&S on Sunday. Waitress remembered us and welcomed us warmly. S&S both had the sardines with tomato and caper sauce off the Specials board as starter; B had mussels and I had a vegetable and goat's cheese stack. S1 had chicken with asparagus and S2 "antara" (duck) as main. B had linguine gamberoni, and I had the crab tortellini off the Specials. S&S shared a lemon tart special dessert, while B and I had a crepe suzette. All excellent, apart from the crepe whch was a bit ordinary. With 3 bottles Orvieto, water, coffee and 10% servicethis came to an extremely good value £223. Lots of other dishes we fancied the sound of too. Likely to become a regular - complimentary limoncello again too!
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