Da Piero

Well we don't get out much do we, first restaurant review for ages.......

Friday saw us visit this Italian restaurant in the heart of Irby, along with some work colleague and a couple of friends. The restaurant is well thought of locally, and has two knives and forks in the 2011 Michelin guide.

It has about twenty covers, making it cosy, and the decor is a bit '50s. There is also talk of them taking over the unit next door and expanding so it will be interesting to see how that changes the look and feel of the place.

Now onto the food. The four of us on our table had a wide choice of dishes. I had crayfish tails to start, the others had Pepata di cozza, a clam based dish, then we had seabass, an ossobuco and meatballs. The ossbuco is a traditional Sicillian dish and looked excellent. The mains all came with puy lentils, chopped saute potatoes and mixed veg. I sometimes find seabass a bit bland but this just about stood the flavour test, I suspect it was farmed though. That said, we all agreed it as very pleasant and  it negated the need for a pud!!

The wine was provided in the price of our deal, and was fine, although I would not know what it was....

So all in all a good forage into the unknown and a venue we will return to. Ambiance is all important in Italian restaurants and the small floor area might stifle that if  too many food trendies were booked in.

Dawn and her staff were very attentive and were good enough to e-mail us in the week to thank us for our service. Maybe the other Michelin restaurant on the Wirral could learn a bit from Da Piero

A brief word too for the pub over the road, the Shippons, where the guv'nor was very welcoming and resigned to his punters regularly going over the road, when he served food himself. We might try that one day ..