We're off out to celebrate Darwin Day tomorrow for an evening meal at Cote (French restaurant chain). Fucking LUSH their food is - 2 courses and 2 drinks and 10% service charge = abt £25 each. Italian? Meh. : D

Animavore wrote:What I dislike most about the Italian restaurants I've been to is the portions never fill you.

I heard Armando Iannucci the other day saying that traditionally you're supposed to have an antipasto dish, then a pasta dish, and then your main. I can't say I've ever had a problem with the portion sizes though.

Nor me. In fact, I often find the amount of pasta in the pasta dishes somewhat overfacing.

Pizza Hut?! I thought this was about Italian restaurants. I almost never eat at restaurants, but I go to Italian pizza/sub shops on a regular basis. I have one or three favorites in every town that I frequent, from here to the Mississippi.

No kidding! If you're including Pizza Hut then you have to include Olive Garden and that's the cheapest shit you'll find.

I always thought it was a nice name though. Olive Garden.

It does roll off the tongue.

East Side Mario’s. Badda bing badda boom.

The winner in the category of legendary pizza joints is....

Really need to re-watch that at some point, it's probably been longer than I think.

I'd never seen or heard of it.

WHAT?!

Observe the opening titles Pipes, ye shall be drawn in

One of the greats.

jamest wrote:I've just been expressing my beefs about Chinese restaurants in another discussion, for totally other reasons, which reminded me of my beef about the extortionate prices of Italian restaurants compared to almost any other here in the UK. For instance, £6.50 for a bottle of beer?!?! That's just taking the piss.

Okay, that's just the beer, but as a family man I've been looking for value whenever we've eaten out over the last couple of decades and I'm positively certain in my own mind that Italian restaurants are definitely [on average] the most expensive.

So, why are the Italians taking the piss? Any ideas? Is it a mafia thingy?

Expensive Italian restaurants are expensive.

Reasonably priced Italian restaurants (my local) are reasonably priced.

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jamest wrote:So, why are the Italians taking the piss? Any ideas? Is it a mafia thingy?

Is it because Italians are wicked, wicked, evil bastards? Like Stromboli perhaps (video clip too upsetting to be shown except in reverse, and even then TBH.)

Plenty of mom and pop Italian places here. My favorite was Angelo's, you got "96 feet" of spaghetti with marinara, a salad, and bread for $5.99. Veal parm was $7.99, $3 beers. Good eats. Once a night Angelo would spin this wheel thing and if your table number came up it was free. Can't get cheaper than that. On the other end of the spectrum is a place called Salute, a linen napkin place. Hard for two to get out for less than $100, $150 with wine. Fucking ace, though.

My local Italian The Collander

Relatively inexpensive

Wetherspoons is the cheapest chain pub/restaurant I'm aware of in the UK at the moment. You can get a meal in there with a FREE drink for about £7 or 8. So, about £30+ for a family of 4. Very reasonable, and the food is okay.

We went to an 'Ask Italian' about 10 days ago and it cost me £90, though we did have a dessert as it was a special occasion. Indeed, 4 desserts cost me about £20+.

As I recall, the price of a 0.5 litre bottle of beer was £6.75, so I just asked for a jug of water. I initially thought that this would be free but on later inspection of the menu discovered that they charged about £2.50 for the water. Three other soft drinks were charged at a similar rate.

I've been to many Italian restaurants over the years and all of them took the piss when it came to drinks. Though the last time I went to Pizza Hut they were allowing free refills on soft drinks but were charging £2.50+ anyway and nobody really wants much more than a half litre of soft drink regardless. Also, as I recall, free salad came with the main, but the main wasn't cheap. On the whole though, Pizza Hut has been the best value Italian we've had because as far as I can remember it's the only fuckin' Italian offering any kind of discount, anywhere.

I mean, I've walked past many a Chinese restaurant offering cheap deals for "all you can eat", or various other restaurants that offer various deals, but I'm seriously hard-pushed to remember any significant deals from any Italian based restaurant other than Pizza Hut.

Also, as one member here mentioned (Ani?), you don't get very big portions in Italian restaurants. So much so that whenever I've been to one (which is many times) I've often returned home and grabbed something out of the fridge. Ffs, when you're spending £50+ to eat out, you at the very least want to feel 'full'.

I guess I'm just annoyed because Italian food is the preference of my wife and girls and I cannot seem to find the Wetherspoons of Italian food anywhere, but in a way I'm secretly glad because (don't tell the missus) I'm not that bothered about it anyway. Give me a roast dinner anytime and I'll be happy.

Something that does need to be clarified: Pizza Hut is not an Italian restaurant.