Restaurant Reviews and Food Musings

Restaurant

O Sole Mio
7 Croxted Road
West Dulwich
London

Phone:- 0208 670 4444

Website www.osolemio.towp.com

Overview

Eva and I spent the afternoon in Dulwich, looking around my old school, and decided to pop into O Sole Mio for a meal at the end of the day.

It, as its name suggests, serves Italian food.

Ambience

The restaurant is cheerfully decorated with the walls painted sunflower yellow, a tiled floor, fake marble top tables and a large sun effect mirror.

Menu

The restaurant offers an a la carte Italian menu with traditional pasta, veal, chicken and steak dishes; together with blackboard specials such as sea bass.

Service

The service is efficient. We were offered a canapé of chopped tomato and garlic in olive oil on ciabattine. A nice gesture, I thought, until I saw the bill at the end which charged £1 for it; rather petty and annoying.

Food

I started with baked avocado and prawns in a béchamel sauce. This consisted of sliced avocado and prawns in a thin béchamel sauce. This tasted quite good. However, I personally prefer a thicker sauce; which gives the dish a firmer consistency in the mouth. My book, “Accountants Can Cook”, contains a recipe more akin to my preferences.

My main course was entrecote steak in a pepper sauce. This was served with boiled potatoes carrots and mange tout. I had requested that my steak be cooked blue. However, there was no evidence at all of any blood; so back it went. The second steak did not seem much better, and indeed was a strange grey colour on the outside. I was suspicious that it had been microwaved, but was assured that it had not been. I gave up, and accepted my fate, it was edible.

Eva started with a very large bowl of mussels in white wine. This was a good dish; the sauce, which had chopped chives in, had a decent piquant flavour but was not too salty. She was very happy with her choice.

Eva’s main course was an enormous bowl of spaghetti carbonara. This was cooked a little too al dente for both our tastes. However, that is a matter of personal preference; which we should have made clear when ordering. Eva, nonetheless, enjoyed it but the dish was so large that she could not finish it.

The meal, which included a bottle of Pinot Grigio, came to £47 including the £1 canapé!

Overall Opinion

On balance we would not go out of our way to go there again.