Il Bacio

I kind of knew what we were going to get even before we entered Il Bacio. My expectations were not that high, and I was not disappointed.

Il Bacio seems to be part of a growing chain in North London, and by the amount of people inside eating every time I have walked past. It seems to be a very prosperous one at that.

The menu is what you would expect to find in any tourist restaurant in Rome. It’s Italian for beginners really. It has all the favourites, the portions are big and the service is with a smile. Sometimes.

As I am still trying to find a decent pizza joint near to my house I wanted to give them a try. So I ordered the margherrita. If they can do that right then all is well in the world. Lina opted for the milanessa and specified no spaghetti. I am still mystified as to why they have as one of their sides, a portion of spaghetti. I mean who wants a portion of meat with some spaghetti. What is the world coming to? Is this how tourists eat in those crap restaurants in Italy you see?

I think Il Bacio get quite a few people asking for no spaghetti, as it was changed with no fuss with patate fritte. I.e. chips.

They have peroni on draft so I was happy, but kinda was wondering why there was a large flat screen TV on the far wall with MTV on it, but no sound.

My pizza came and had a tonne of gooey mozzarella, which was rather nice. The base was a tad hard but it was ok. It was nothing to write home about, or much to put in a blog about. So I’ll stop.

The milanessa baffled me. It was 4 small pieces of slightly burnt chunks of breaded chicken with some rather nice oven chips. Oh memories came flooded back of my teens where my mum hit those culinary heights. Oven chips and fried eggs. God how I miss the 80’s. She still has them now, I am sure of it. 

When the bill came, Lina almost flipped. They had charged her for the chips, instead of replacing them with the spaghetti. Amazingly she bit her lip, paid the bill and left. The manager called to us and said goodbye. She gave him a hard stare and a curt nod of her head in a way that in other circles would have meant a death sentence.

I’d only seen her act like that once before. It was in an Italian restaurant, well actually it was in Italy. It was not long after we got to know each other, and we found ourselves in Italy camping our way through the country. Shame we really had no money, as we ate pretty shit in those days.

In one restaurant in Rome, we had a good meal. Simple and nice. The bill came and it had il pane on it. Which means bread. But also as we found out about 10 years later, it means service charge or similar. Lina thinking and rightly so that they were charging us for the bread. She flipped. She gave that poor woman a torrent of abuse in Spanish. I’m not sure if she was understood as no move was made to take il pane off the bill. Actually she just stood there behind the counter and stared almost in disbelief at this crazy Latina going off on one.

It was kinda amazing really to see this woman kick off over a 2 euro charge. Needless to say we never went back, and I know for a fact we shall never venture into Il Bacio again. Damn as I kinda liked the naff pizza.