20190927 Piatto and Steven ter Horst

Even though I booked the booth on Tuesday, when I arrived at the pub, there was no table reserved for us, so we sat in a booth that was reserved for 7.30 knowing we would be gone by then. Stephen, Con and Chad all came in relatively quickly. We ordered our usual round of jugs. Jen surprised us by dropping by too.

Between us tonight, we had 3 bowls of crisps and 1 bowl of hot potato wedges.

It was my turn to choose tonight and I had already booked at Piatto. Richard was at an event and told us he would meet us there.

When we arrived at Piatto, we saw Rob Kulkarni, a fellow Toastmaster sitting on the table by the wall. He was with a 'girl' friend.

One of the reasons for choosing Piatto this week was because on reviewing our previous restaurants visited we actually gave Piatto a high score last time we visited. And besides which, I felt like pasta.

I had vegetarian fetticuine. They didn't have spinach ricotta pasta. I was really happy with my meal and gave it an 8.5. The sauce was rich and there was plenty of it. Unfortunatley, because I had filled up on crisps and chips earlier I couldn't eat it all and got a doggy bag for the remaining half of the meal.

Jen had chilli and honey prawns with rice. It looked amazing. Just as an aside, Jen asked if the prawns were shelled and the waitress said there was no shell on the prawns. However, when the meal came out it had the tail shell. No big problem but just a bit misleading.  Jen gave her meal a 9 out of 10 - high praise! Jen said the dish had the perfect balance of flavours.


We know Jen likes alot of chilli on her dish so I think Chad asked for extra chilli. It didn't come in a sauce but just the dried chilli that you buy in the shops. Not the most appropriate condiment to put on your meal because the hard chilli flakes haven't had time to soften in a sauce.


Richard has a veal dish with fish and thick creamy sauce with vegetables. He complained afterwards that there was nothing to mop up the juice and sauce. He decided to give his meal a 7.5.

One of the downsides of Piatto is that they don't serve bread with pasta. A comment I made on our last visit.

Both Stephen and Chad had the special meatballs and spaghetti. Chad was much more impressed with the dish than Stephen. Chad gave his meal a 8.5 and Stephen gave his a 7. He was going to give it a 7.5 but thought it should have had more meatballs. He complained he only had 3 small meatballs.






Finally, we had Con's meal which was the calzone and what a meal it was - it was enormous! He tried his best to get through it all but in the end Chad had to help him out with the last bit. Con said that the meal was too much and gave his a 6 out of 10.



Jen talked about his playlists that she has on Spotify. We talked about favourite artists and I said that my first love was Bob Dylan. She has a few Bob Dylan songs on her playlist and she says that one particular song makes her cry whenever she listens to it.

We talked about her writing and one of her characters - the invisible woman. A great premise for a detective story I think!


We went to Steven ter Horst for hot chocolate and we squeezed on the end of the bench. Richard had a chocolate muffin with his drink. Jen had a very dense, rich chocolate slice which looked amazing. The guys helped her out in finishing it because it was so rich. Perfect with peppermint tea.

Jen said that she would come along next week so it will be her turn to choose.