Grossi Florentino Grill on a sunny Saturday

For Christmas my lovely daughter-in-law promised to take me out to lunch to Florentino's Grill and yesterday was the day we finally did it. This is the place and we sat just about the third table down from the front of the photo - just opposite the kitchen. It was a little busier that in the photo but not a lot so we were not overwhelmed by noise.

The Grill is Grossi Florentino's middle level of the three restaurants in the building. Upstairs is the very posh special occasion place - well maybe the rich dine there all the time, but the rest of us only do it once or twice in our lifetimes. The Grill is also not very cheap, although you can have the daily special menu - I think it was three courses for $55 and two for $44 including limitless Pellegrino water, but not wine. Yesterday's (for I am writing this a day late), was a Calabrian selection. I gather they change it to different regions of Italy. There was no choice but the choice that was there was pretty tempting - a pasta Napolitana, a meatloaf and an ice cream kind of thing. However, we chose to choose from the à la carte.

One of the things you can judge a good restaurant by, I think, is how many things you could eat on the menu - and I think I could safely say I could eat all of it - except for the oysters and maybe the liver paté - though at a pinch I could eat that too. Not the oysters though. So it took a while to decide. In the end we decided to ignore the mains and go for three antipasti to share and a pasta each. Washed down with an Italian wine from the slopes of Mount Vesuvius. It was different - unlike any other wine I had tasted I think, but very nice. And they offered lots of options for how you bought it - 150ml (a glass I guess), 250ml, 500ml and a bottle. We did go for the 500ml but we probably should have stuck to the 250ml - though, on reflection I guess that would have been less than a glass each. Anyway I wish more restaurants would offer these options - mostly you only get the choice of a glass or a bottle.

By the way, although we ignored the mains, these too were pretty interesting sounding - and from glancing at our neighbour's meals they looked pretty good - not just a chunk of meat with nothing else - as is often the Italian way.

And it was all totally delicious. Beautifully prepared and presented. It looked like it all came from this tiny little kitchen in front of us:

And I think some of it did, but there was also another larger kitchen around the back. I wonder if the food for all of the restaurants comes from the same kitchen? For, as my daughter-in-law said at some point - "so what do they do better upstairs?" I cannot really answer this question for I haven't been there for a very long time - though I would love to some day. Maybe when I turn 80! I do know the surroundings are much plusher and probably the cutlery and glassware are more expensive. More space perhaps and a longer wine list. I don't know about the food though. What we had could not have been better really.

Maybe my only slightly critical comment would be that the prawns were slightly difficult to eat. They were huge, cooked in their shell and split down the middle. The meat was a bit difficult to get out - but it tasted great. And that's prawns for you really. We loved the salt cod purée. And yes we could cook it at home - but maybe not so well. I've never tried and maybe I should. I shall seek out a recipe.

We didn't take pictures of our meal, though Dionne did take a picture of the wine - the wine waiter suggested this. And did I say that the service was perfect? There when you needed it, informative, friendly, unobtrusive. And they remembered who had ordered what. Not very difficult when there are only two of you I know but very often the waiter seems to need to ask what dish is for whom. I did find a picture on their website of what I think is Dionne's pasta - pappardelle with a duck and mushroom ragù.

I had a quick taste. I'm sure the pasta would have been home-made and the ragù was rich and delicious and not too ducky. My crab pasta had a touch of chilli and basil and was similarly delicious. And the desserts were divine.

All in all a wonderful experience. Thank you Dionne. Do go. Even their 'cheap' Cellar Bar, which is more of a café for which you cannot book, has utterly delicious food, though of a more 'standard' Italian kind.

Before the Grossi family took over Florentino's they used to have a restaurant in Eltham, called Pietro's. We went there a few times because the food was utterly delicious - sorry I don't have any better words. Familiar but just a little bit fancy and perfectly cooked. The highest quality comfort food I guess - though that is putting it down a bit because it wasn't just spaghetti bolognaise cooked well. The dishes were much more adventurous than that - but not weird or precious. I must check out Guy Grossi's cookbooks. I have none.