Piccolino is an offer you can refuse

Jul 10 2008 By Richard McComb

Piccolino **
9 Brindleyplace, Birmingham. Tel: 0121 634 3055

It all depends on which side your bruschetta is buttered, but the question is this: does Birmingham really need another Italian restaurant?

Piccolino, the latest arrival, has set up shop bang opposite Cielo, another Italian-inspired restaurant, in Oozells Square, Brindleyplace.

In fact, it’s not some much arrived as docked, like a lunar space module. The interior design and lighting scheme is a thing of wonder, great bold colours pulsing like the ones that flicker onthe UFOs flitting over Cannock Chase.

Piccolino has taken over the DIY superstoresized unit that was formerly the ill-starred brasserie of Raymundo Bianco (as the Gallic restaurateur is known along the Adriatic).

Canteen-style restaurants on this scale work, if they are going to work, on a simple premise: they’ve got to serve a lot of customers a lot of food, and a lot of booze, to make a decent crust.

Piccolino’s backers have spent a reputed £1.5 million sprucing up Bianco’s beast of burden and that kind of financial outlay needs servicing quickly, particularly amid all this talk of the "R" word (and I don’t mean rigatoni).

The venture is part of the Individual Restaurant Company – which also owns Bank in Brindleyplace – and is part of a big business, formidable even. There are nearly 20 Piccolinos dotted around the country, which gives you an indication of what to expect.

Wayne and Coleen’s mates probably lap it up and the feeling is more OK! than Vogue. Maybe there’s nothing wrong with that. You pays your money… Before I go any further, I feel I should get something awkward out of the way.

I’ve had – how can I put this – a passionate relationship with the owners of the city’s Italian restaurants. (All right, I’ve been banned from a few, although I have made my peace with one.) One Italian restaurateur, whose place I would recommend without question, once asked me if I had ever woken to find a horse’s head in my bed. "No," I said, laughing. "Give it time," he said, not laughing.

Someone else questioned my eating credentials. I think they’re rather good. I’ve been doing it now – eating – every day for 40 years, far more regularly than I ever practised the piano, in which I got Grade 3.

Let me make it clear that my past criticisms do not arise from any anti-Italian feeling – I always root for the Azzurri in football tournaments – and being a forgiving chap I am prepared to accept that several below-par experiences may have been the result of bad timing on my part. (There, that sounded sincere.)

The slate is always clean with me, so Piccolino was approached with an open-mind even though alarm bells started ringing with the claim that it brings "a true taste of Italy to its customers." Is there an untrue taste of Italy?

The evening can best be described as a dinner of two halves: I got the decent one, with the veal, and my wife got the turkey (although strictly speaking, the turkey was a sea bass).

The sautéed king prawns with garlic and chilli butter, served on toasted Tuscan bread, were pretty good, and not over-chillied. Sally’s olives were miserable, flaccid with an unpleasant taste.

Great play has been made of the fact that Piccolino’s produce is sourced by development chef Alessandro Cristiano, and the prosciutto, served with melon, was terrific. The olives were bad, though, and the roasted asparagus was overcooked.

 Worcestershire and Warwickshire are teeming with asparagus at this time of the year. Had Cristiano sourced it from there? I’ve no idea, there was no indication on the menu.

There was the usual array of risottos and pastas and some tasty sounding fish and meat dishes. We chose wisely/foolishly from the specials and my veal saltimbocca was serviceable with a good gravy. The baby leeks, though, needed trimming and one was gritty.

Sally’s sea bass had shuffled off any semblance of life many moons ago. It was hidden under a wafer of burnt, greasy potato, which served as a ready-made coffin lid. She didn’t finish.

Puds, too, were a mixed bag. The chocolate ice cream with my pear thing was distinctly good but the iced lemon sorbet, being iced, was neither sorbet nor ice cream. And it was stringy.

The meal for two, with two large glasses of wine, a mineral water, a shot of eternally disgusting strega (my own fault) and a coffee was just over £90. Now, for that sort of money, you can get a brilliant three-course set dinner (without wine, accepted) at a Michelin-star restaurant.

The decision on where to dine is not a hard one – and that really isn’t my fault.