Villa Italia, 39-41 University Road, Belfast, BT7 1ND. Tel: 028 9032 8356
Describing Villa Italia’s location - a little way down and across the road from Queen’s University in south Belfast - to someone not quite sure about it invariably ends up in the same place.
“The one with the queue outside.”
If you know anything about Villa Italia, it’s that. That and the fact it feels like it’s been there forever. Not quite, but having opened in 1988, still being around the guts of 40 years later should probably count as ‘forever’ in the restaurant world.
And it’s not just still there, it’s still packing them in to the huge 300-plus seat space(s) with its terracotta hues, hanging grapevines and murals of scenes from across Italy.
Read More: Boil ’n’ Butter review: Super seafood spot is a hot mess in the best possible way
Our particular table sits under a view of the Castel Sant’Angelo that may well have covered that wall from day one back in ’88.
Villa Italia has always felt like a frozen-in-aspic, gently clichéd impression of an Italian restaurant, but there’s an undeniable warmth about it, and tonight that’s carried by the constant hum and clink and occasional clatter of an awful lot of people out for their dinner.
The scale of Villa Italia is reflected in the menu, which is substantial enough at any time without beloved Italian Christmas favourites like a big plate of turkey and ham or a bowl of Christmas pudding taking pride of place among the specials.
While that stuff’s there to cater to a fair chunk of patrons who venture out to eat at this time of year, the standard menu is a sometimes peculiar mix of Italian, Italian-ish and not really Italian at all dishes.
Pizzas and pastas are the pillars, but before we get to those. there’s a frito misto starter that combines squid rings and prawns in a light coating that’s a bit soft and uninteresting with the squid, yet beautifully crisp and wispy on the prawns. A zippy lemon mayonnaise makes the squid acceptable and the prawns something very lovely.
Read More: Grant’s restaurant review: A taste of America still worth celebrating
Across the table, the quartet of golf-ball-sized arancini is a more consistently successful exercise in deep frying.
Each golden sphere packs an audible crunch, and the moist rice inside is well enough flavoured to stand up to another tasty mayonnaise, this one basil.
There’s a school of thought that ordering a carbonara with the word ‘cream’ in the description is asking for trouble. The Italian Food Authenticity Police – the Carbonarieri, maybe? – would have no truck with a sauce that’s anything but eggs. And it wouldn’t be too happy with bacon rather than guanciale or parmesan in lieu of pecorino either.
But how ‘authentic’ – an enormously thorny and often utterly invented issue, especially in Italy – a dish is should matter far less than whether it’s any good.
A creamy, bacony, parmesany bowl of pasta can be a lovely thing. You can even throw a bit of chicken in there if you fancy it.
Unfortunately, the carbonara at Villa Italia isn’t lovely. While the spaghetti is well cooked, it comes in a claggy, underpowered sauce, whose blandness gets no help whatsoever from pallid bits of bacon and the apparent lack of any of the copious black pepper that is a necessary bulwark against the dish’s richness.
So, is the lesson not to mess with the classics?
Not really, because the pizza rustica is fantastic.
A creamy, bacony, parmesany bowl of pasta can be a lovely thing. Unfortunately, the carbonara at Villa Italia isn’t lovely
Crushed garlic baby potatoes come on a parmesan cream base, with a tangle of sweet onions and bacon treated much better than it was in the carbonara by actually having a bit of colour introduced to it.
It’s finished with hot honey and held up on an impressively toothsome crust. This is a rather good, rather generous pizza. Generous enough that the pungent, swimming-in-butter, garlic spuds on the side may have been a step too far.
It’s all a noted uptick in quality compared to that carbonara, which ends up the outlier of the night after a nicely just-set panna cotta, stuffed with little chunks of white chocolate and raspberry, and a punchy but softly comforting tiramisu.
These are very much crowd-pleasers as the crowd keeps coming in. It’s actually a bit quiet this Sunday night, as the first of a clutch of endlessly cheerful efficient servers tells us.
We wonder what it must be like when it’s busy. With a queue outside, I suppose.
THE BILL
- Arancini £7.95
- Frito misto £8.85
- Pizza rustica £15.85
- Spaghetti carbonara £16.35
- Garlic potatoes £3.90
- Tiramisu £7.45
- Panna cotta £6.95
- Sicilian cocktail £8.25
- Peroni 0.0 £4.50
TOTAL: £80.05
