Monday, 21 October 2013

DonPietro, Gants Hill, Essex: Eat fast on Saturday night before the nightclub opens

19 October
A convenient meeting place for a grown up family gathering was deemed to be the Don Pietro Italian restaurant on Cranbrook Road in Gants Hill. This is very close to the Southend Road, and Gants Hill Tube station. It also is a couple of doors down from the Faces night club, which I am told is favoured by Essex youth. For that reason, on a Saturday night, so we were told, the place closed at 10pm for health and safety reasons. There is a more than comprehensive web site at http://www.donpietro.co.uk/ but whoever wrote the code for this page assumes everyone has a wide screen.
At 7pm when we arranged to meet, it was already filling up. This might be due to the special offer of a two course meal for £10 which seemed to be what all the clients wanted. Given that a main meat course from the a-la-carte was £15, it made a lot of sense providing the limited menu (see web page) suited. The place made its money up on drink as a bottle of house plonk, straightforwardly called Vino Rosso (no pretensions here) was £15, and a small cup of coffee was £2.50. Service is reputedly slow and the big thing is that the special deal ownly works if the order reaches the kitchen before 7.30, so no pressure there.
For starter, I had funghi picante (sliced fresh mushrooms in a hot spicy tomato and black olive salsa. Theis was exactly as described. 
This was a decent sized portion as described above, with some bread and was hot scoring a 8.8 on the CHOF scale. This was suprising judging how slow the service was, but perhaps they cooked each dish separately rather than keeping them hanging around. Recommended.
For main course I had the Fegato Venetian (sic), which was a different spelling of the dish I would normally have and was described as Finest Dutch calves liver with sautéed onions, served with potatoes & vegetables
This was not quite what any of us expected, as my researches suggest that the onions should be slowly cooked until soft, and typically it is like a sauce/gravy. This was more like liver and onions. Nevertheless, this was perfectly well cooked tasty and hot, also an 8.8 on the CHOF scale. My wife had beef stroganoff which I tasted and was excellent.
Basically for £10 plus drinks and service, you cannot raise any complaints, and it was hot. I would definitely go back there again, and try something else off the menu, but only if I had the time as service is slow. It has a family feel to it. When we left about 9.30, the drinkers/smokers were spilling out into the street from bars near the nightclub. Three effective looking door men were policing the entrance to Faces. I have no knowledge of these thing but http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2186947/TOWIEs-James-Arg-Argent-tries-head-leaves-nightclub-girls.html
No wonder they close early.

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