Lifestyle: Restaurant review – Pasta di Piazza, Birmingham

IN our 15 minutes of fame world the familiar is often overlooked in favour of the new, which is a real shame.

Things that have lasted a long time and are still going strong are sending out a message that is well worth listening to I would suggest.

Take Pasta di Piazza in Birmingham as a prime example.

The neighbourhood restaurant – located just off St Paul’s Square in Birmingham’s Jewellery Quarter – has been serving up excellent dishes of Italian food for 20 years and yet rarely merits a mention whereas teenagers setting up a ‘pop up’ burger bar in a disused warehouse get critical acclaim and column inches.

We are where we are I suppose but I hope such trends don’t stop eateries such as Pasta Di Piazza from continuing to do what they do.

My experience of the restaurant has largely been from eating its excellent pizzas, which are cooked fresh but cost about the same as the average High Street chain.

But on a recent visit I decided to be a bit more adventurous.

I started with the gamberetti marinara, which was prawns in tomato sauce with garlic, parsley and a little chilli (£5.95), whilst my companion went all Evesham on me, ordering fresh grilled asparagus with a pistachio crust and hollandaise sauce (£6.85).

Both were delicious. Italian restaurants are only as good as their base sauce or sugo and this one had an intense depth of flavour which worked brilliantly with the prawns and had a subtle chilli kick. I only wished I’d kept back some of my bread – from the bread and olives – to mop it up with.

My fellow diner loved her asparagus, which is a match made in heaven with hollandaise, and thought the pistachio crust gave it a different texture and a flavour twist.

My main course of pollo cacciatore, or hunter’s chicken, (£14.50) is a personal favourite. It is pure comfort food – pan-fried chicken breast with garlic, red onions, chilli flakes and mixed peppers in a homemade tomato sauce – and I wasn’t let down. Every mouthful was a delight.

Full of hunter’s chicken I was ready to jump on my horse and chase wild boar around the Jewellery Quarter.

It came with potatoes and vegetables of the day for no extra charge which is well worth mentioning because one thing I dislike about many Italian restaurants is that you have to pay for vegetables on top, after ordering the main course, which is a con frankly.

My companion plumped for casarecca al salmone (£10.15) which was smoked salmon with watercress, lemon zest and mascarpone with a homemade pesto sauce with pasta tubes.

She loved the combination of salmon, citrus and pesto but the portion sizes were big and she was beaten well before the pattern started to show on the plate.

Indeed we were both stuffed (technical term) and could manage only one panna cotta (£5.45) between us for dessert. It was wobbly and wonderful, just like my dining companion as she left the restaurant.

It’s also worth mentioning the service at Pasta di Piazza which is attentive without being claustrophobic and the daily specials board (another mark of a good Italian) which on the day of our visit was offering mussels, tuna, swordfish, sea bass and lemon sole.

All in all a very satisfying lunch at a local restaurant that should be cherished for doing what is does very well and which hopefully will never be replaced by an establishment selling Sicilian street food.

Pasta di Piazza can be found at 11 Brook Street, Birmingham, B3 1SA. Tel: 0121 236 5858.