Il Tocca d'Artista, North Finchley. Popular suburban Italian

Saturday, 2nd November
Our moving dinner friends' outing was to this small trattoria like restaurant just south of North Finchley. It had been test driven by two of our group, and has lots of positive opinions on TripAdvisor. There is no web presence.
Saturday night was busy, and waiting staff seemed to be a bit overwhelmed. In fact our main course order appeared to have been lost, and the waitress came out to confirm what we thought we had ordered. I think they had lost the order.
The menu is quite short and with old favourites. There are specials and many of the diners were tucking into large bowls of mussels, which I never eat.
I had squid in a sauce for starter.

For a starter portion, it was quite expensive, being the same price as main course pasta. In fact most of the starters were a bit on the expensive side compared to the costs of the main courses. Whilst I have seen lemon with squid before, I have never had it with orange, and did not try to make the combination. Whilst attractive and hot ( a nine on the CHOF scale), the squid was a bit rubbery. I checked with the cold squid that my wife had in her seafood salad, and I seemed to have drawn the short straw here. 

For main course, I had the veal in mushroom and cream sauce.

They obviously had a few spare oranges going. However, this was a decent portion, also a 9 on the CHOF scale and lived up to expectations, additional vegetables were a plate of spinach and fried courgettes, and sautee potatoes. With four bottles of house wine between six (someone must have had my share), the bill came to just under £30 each, which was probably a bit on the expensive side, as there was no desert. I noted that there was a cover charge, and given that there was no bread and no table cloth, and one bowl of olives between six, that was pushing their luck.

I would say that this is probably best for pizza and pasta judging by what other diners were eating. Service was very slow and best that you don't go there expecting to leave soon. A nice touch is leaving a bottle of limoncello on the table which patrons can help themselves to. Makes one feel a bit better in several ways including the fact that hot food was served hot..