Friday, 8 August 2014

Pinocchio's Restaurant - Norwich City Centre

As mentioned in my last post, I went to Norwich for a mini-break with my family and got home yesterday evening. I had no idea how nice Norwich is, I expected it to be full of 1960s and 70s grey buildings and full of chain restaurants and shops. Although there are parts like that, we mainly kept to the old part of the city centre, with cobbled lanes and independent shops and cafés. The old buildings were so interesting to look at and this part of town had such a nice character.


On Tuesday morning, we wandered down to the cathedral, which was enormous and one of the most beautiful cathedrals I've seen.


We spent the rest of the day exploring the town and by the evening we were pretty hungry. After walking around for a very long time we decided the go in Pinocchio's Restaurant on St Benedicts Street. It described itself as a Mediterranean Brasserie and the food mainly focus' on an Italian theme.

I ordered the burger, which had an Italian twist as the beef patty was accompanied by pancetta, taleggio and salsa verde.

 
I hadn't had taleggio before, which is an Italian cheese that has a consistency when melted that reminded me a bit of melted mozzarella but with a more pungent flavour. I'm not a huge cheese lover so I found there to be a bit much, but it was interesting having something a bit different to the usual cheddar you get in burgers. Salsa verde is a sauce made up of ingredients like parsley and vinegar and compliments meat well. It was quite strong and there was a tad too much of it in this burger for my liking but overall it was a really good burger.



It was nice to have a slightly different version of something I always have and the triple-cooked chips it was served with were really good.

My parents both had pasta dishes - tagliatelle carbonara and pappardelle with spicy lamb ragu, both of which were delicious.


 
My sister had a lamb dish served with bulgur wheat in a pomegranate sauce (I thought it was horrible but she thought it was one of the best meals she's ever had).


Earlier in the day I had decided against getting an ice cream and planned on having dessert with dinner instead, and I'm glad I did!


I had the salted caramel filo crisp with white peaches. Salted caramel mousse sandwiched between two layers of crispy pastry filled with nuts and topped with slices of white peach. It was a combination I've never had before and it was very tasty.


The salted caramel mousse was particularly good! I wish it was served with a scoop of ice cream or some extra sauce but I still enjoyed it and I would definitely have it again.

My mum had the tiramisu which she enjoyed.

 
Overall we had a lovely meal and the service was great. If I was going back to Norwich for a couple of days I would probably find somewhere else to try out but if I lived in Norwich I would definitely go back there.

No comments:

Post a Comment