The food of love
Last week, I promised you that I'd be out and about researching the best garlic bread in town for this week's column. True to my word, I've been out twice this week to 2 different Italian restaurants in order to bring you, the reader, the low down on the cheapest booze, the tastiest pizza, and not to mention the best looking waiters in town.
I love eating out, it's great having someone else doing the cooking and having the food presented in front of me. I like those little bottles of beer that you get nowhere else but in Italian restaurants, and desserts that are out of this world. I like being called "signora" and shown to my table, ordering dishes from the menu in the best Geordie-Italian accent I can manage.
I love the way Italian restaurants always manage to create such an intimate atmosphere; room dividers screen you away from prying eyes and private booths give you privacy all night. ClicheƩ Chianti bottles hang from the ceiling alongside strings of garlic and plastic onions, dangling over square tables with red gingham table cloths, lights dimmed. Candle-light flickers, casting shadows and catching expressions on faces you can barely see behind those private screens, revealing emotions and passions on people's faces you've never met. The waiters, dark and mysterious in crisp white shirts and trousers too tight to be comfortable hover silently around, one hand holding their checked tea cloth while the other lights candles, fills glasses, quickly touches up their moustache, eyeing up the females, serving steaming plates of pasta shimmering with garlic and tingling with parmesan.
And then my dinner arrives. Smoked salmon pasta in a creamy seafood sauce. What can I say? I've died and gone to heaven only to find they serve Italian food there. Bellissimo! Wonderful! It makes my taste buds sing and my tonsils dance. Fantastic. With some crispy garlic bread to help it down, what more can a girl want? Oh yes... where did that waiter go in those tight black trousers......
Glenda Young is also the writer of the weekly
Coronation Street Update
on the net, and can be contacted at:
glenda@londonmall.co.uk
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