I wasn’t going to review tonight’s dinner as we were both tired and hungry after a long week and in need of a quick but decent feed before heading home. What we experienced, however, was some of the worst food I can remember, and there’s just no way I can let it pass.
Italians Restaurant is located on the corner of Walter Road and Coode Street in Dianella, and according to its website are “Perth’s pasta specialists” with “quality fresh produced handled lightly and cooked precisely”. Apparently they even do degustation dinners. It’s close to home and we’ve been meaning to give it a try – it’s rated at 75% on Urbanspoon so we were expecting it to be ok, although the reviews vary from good to bad.
Firstly, I should point out that the wait-staff were efficient and friendly – but alarm bells started ringing when we were told that there was no diet-cola products on the premises, and then our lemon squashes (which were supposed to be lemonade) came out in glasses filled to about an inch from the top.
For entree we ordered the arancini stuffed with bolognese and mozzarella ($12), and garlic bread ($5). The arancinis were very small given that there was only two of them, maybe 4cm in diameter each. They were served in a very deep curved dish and buried under a huge amount of rocket, presumably so you wouldn’t see how small they were. The dish was so deep that every time I tried to cut them they would just collapse and disappear deeper in the bowl. I eventually fished them out onto a plate only to discover that they didn’t taste of anything. The garlic bread was ordinary.
The small carbonara ($14) was well described as tasting “home-made, but not in a good way”, but the real star of the show was my “ravioli tirolesi” ($23), an interesting sounding meal of “ravioli stuffed with potato, ricotta, braised leeks, saffron, tossed with fried sage & prosciutto in a creamy parmesan sauce”. I don’t know where to start with the description of what I actually received, but there was definitely no sign of saffron or sage. And the tasteless ravioli was undercooked. And perhaps the most insulting of all, the braised leeks were substituted with shredded white cabbage. It tasted like a bad home attempt to follow a recipe when you didn’t have all the ingredients. I’m not one to complain in restaurants, but this is about as close as I’ve ever come to causing a scene.
We just paid $62 for one of the most disgusting meals ever. I’m still in shock, and I’m still hungry.
So what’s for dinner?
