Assaggi

Assaggi is a Italian restaurant above a lovely looking pub on Chepstow road in West London (near Portobello, Queensway & Notting Hill). I had been a couple of times with my ma & pa back in the day & always had pretty much excellent meals, in fact at one point I thought it was the best Italian restaurant in London. It had 1 Michelin star but lost it a couple of years ago & for what ever reason I hadn't been there for ages , so.......

I booked a night to go with Tony, my bro who lives around the corner & was looking forward to going back. It's quite a small space so you do have to book usually & on the night we went it was pretty packed. We ordered a nice white wine & had some bread brought out, they do "Carta di Musica" a sardinian flat bread, then were shown the menus! Tony was immediately not happy as the whole menu was in Italian (I think it was the last time I went but never had a problem before). I can understand some Italian ok but everything is translated by a waitress. As said the room is quite small & very busy so it was really hard to hear everything clearly & as Tony said by the time we got to the bottom he had forgotten what was at the top. "Poncey" & "Disgrace" was just some of the words to come out of Tony so could tell it was going to be one of those sorts of nights. He even texted his friends who had been there recently to ask them for any pointers.

Basically I ordered & Tony said he would have exactly the same as whatever I was having so for starters we had "Lamb sweetbread with some red onions, leaf & some pancetta & a nice sweet balsamic sort of dressing". The sweetbread was very tender & quite tasty though Tony thought it was pretty bland but ok.

For mains we had the "Fritto Misto" which is a selection of fried fish (Prawns, Calamari & red mullet I think) which I've had in Italy many times & also the previous time in Assaggi which I've always loved but this time it seemed a little bland & boring. It also came with very thin crisps/chips which equally were not that enjoyable. The fish seemed fresh & ok but just had no wow or spark of any kind. Tony thought the same & basically said if he wanted fish & chips we should have gone to a proper chippy!

Onto desserts which went down very badly with Tony. The dessert menu was in English! Tony pointed this out to a couple of the bemused waiters & waitresses & asked why the main menu is in Italian & the dessert menu was in English. Not much of an answer back & a little bit of ranting then we got on with ordering. I had a Panna cotta with an espresso poured on top & Tony had a Tiramisu. The Panna cotta was nice & the Tiramisu was ok & we quaffed a couple of brandies with them which probably made them taste better then they probably were.

As we left there was a few more rants by my bro to the staff about the menu & for being to be poncey & the fact he didn't like the food to much. He also threatened to pee through there letterbox so I had to drag him away (Possibly to much wine & brandy I think) & sometime later that night after I left he phoned them up, there answer machine was in English, which riled him up so much he left a abusive message about how rubbish he thought the restaurant to be & that he would never go back! I think there was worse said but probably best not to write! So anyways a pretty bad experience & probably wont/can't ever go back.