Arezzo Restaurant
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Italian restaurant within the Hawkwell House Hotel, open to non-residents. |
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On a Friday night we rang Arezzo at the last minute and had no trouble booking, which was refreshing. The Italian menu looks good on paper, and the hotel is a big white Italianate villa with a luxuriously fitted-out interior, so we were ready to be impressed. The restaurant itself is in a massive old conservatory - which is charming if a little chilly - with slightly old-fashioned decor, fresh flowers and bright white linen on the tables, and music of the 'retro' variety playing on loop. You'd be forgiven for thinking you'd fallen through a wormhole into a posh-ish eaterie in an out-of-season continental holiday destination, and the contrast between the restaurant and the front-of-house is marked. Service, though, is attentive - there were loads of smart staff, and they were trying hard, but it's possible that their gameplan needs tightening! It took some time for our drinks to arrive after we'd ordered them, one requiring fetching from the distant bar, though we were in no hurry. The pan fried chorizo salad starter was a little low on chorizo and not very flavoursome (how do you make chorizo bland?). When our mains arrived (after one set of mains had arrived and departed again, only to return via the kitchen to end up on the next table), the medium rare rib-eye steak was well done, and the garlic mash with my duck confit resembled smash - but was tasty and flavoursome nevertheless. (The same couldn't be said of the bland tomato 'stew' with it, sadly.) The steak was fine despite being wrong, the chunky chips with it were excellent, and there was an unusual jammy flavour to the steamed veg, the source of which we failed to identify. The duck confit was well-cooked, the tasty meat falling off the bone just as it should. For dessert I chose pannacotta, which had a good texture and came with a berry compote which I would have liked more of. We also had a bottle of Hawkwell's own fizzy water (a special machine filters and carbonates tap water and puts it into nice glass bottles - more eco-friendly than importing fizz in plastic, apparently) and we enjoyed our glasses of red (Californian cabernet-zinfandel) and white (Italian pinot grigio). (The wine list is decent but has some fairly hefty mark-ups.) The bill came to around £55.00, and whilst that seemed reasonable, I think we'd pay the little bit extra next time to eat somewhere where the dishes have the little bit of flair that makes all the difference between an ok dinner and a good one. Su Jordan & Susie Cogan, 10/03/08
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