Caldesi in Campagna

My visit here to Caldesi in Campagna has made me embark on my first ever voyage of restuarant critique. An impromptu luch with my mother has turned out to be a delightful gastromonic experience.

A warm welcome, very comfortable dining setting, with (great joy) chairs which were a pleasure to sit in. Service good, wine by the glass excellent but, oh, the food - the seabass ravioli was simply the best tasting pasta I have ever had the pleasure to enjoy. The truffle fettecine came a close second and we would have liked to eat our starters all over again for main course! However, more delights followed in the form of perfectly cooked, succulent calves liver,moistened with sage butter, and my mother's option of superbly tender duck breast with cherries.

Every course a triumph, a complete pleasure, and I cannot wait to come back to sample the rest of the menu!
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Suzy Lambert
10 Overall rating
Food 10 | Service 10 | Atmosphere 10 | Value for money 9
Wednesday, September 21, 2011

On our 1st visit we were swept away by the genuine hospitality. The food was utterly delicious & now we go every week!!

A must for everyone who enjoys honest, healthy, good food.

What I found so appealing was that on our 2nd visit they remembered us & treated us like family. The food was as perfect as the last time.We have never had a bad meal...which is a feat in its self for most restaurants.

My 6 year old son always asks to go there than anywhere else.

We love it!!!!!
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kim atherden lindberg
10 Overall rating
Food 10 | Service 10 | Atmosphere 10 | Value for money 9
Sunday, July 18, 2010

The three of us came to Caldesi in May last year (see review above), and the experience was so delightful that we decided to celebrate the anniversary. Return visits to places where atmosphere played such a large part in the experience are often disappointing (as zeitgeist can never be completely reproduced); our visit on Saturday (23 May 2009), however, was not only a delightful re-run, but was actually better. The food was of its usual excellent quality: a magically simple assemblage of warm prawns and asparagus; lemon, parmesan and basil tagliatelle (I use this combination myself - the lemon lightens the pasta, so that this traditional Italian course, sometimes over-facing to British sensibility, actually becomes an appetite enhancer) ; a splendidly rich calf's liver. Dessert for one of us was the excellent tiramisu, while two of us opted for pannacotta. Four words about the latter - try it at Caldesi! It seems that almost every cheap Italian restaurant now offers an insipid blob of flavourless white blancmange and a few bits of frozen fruit; Caldesi's pannacotta is the real deal. The pannacotta itself is rich and creamy, and flavoured with real vanilla; and the summer fruits are flambéed at the table for you - a bit of corny drama, I know, but it ensures that the fruit flavours are brought out by the cooking process (while the fruit remain still firm), and the instant hit of warm, caramelised sugar cannot be achieved any other way.

What is amazing is that the price (£16.50 for four courses) was actually lower than last year's (this alone means that, for the quality of food, your rail and taxi fares from London are instantly offset). The excellent value of the food, as last year, allowed us to splurge on the wine list, and Caldesi has an excellent cellar. We began with a glass of refreshing Ferrari Perlé Rosé “Metodo Classico” (a perfect pick-me-up after our walk along the river), and chose a bottle of Valle Isarco Gewurtztraminer for our first two courses. If you haven't drunk Gewurtztraminer from the Italian Tyrol before, do so - it it drier than its Germanic cousins, and somhow more fruity. Our main course was accompanied by a delicious Sicilian Cerasuolo - its lightness achieved by maturation in tone amphorae rather than in the barrel. A glass of fabulously biscuity prosecco complemented our dessert.

Please, please, please take a trip to Caldesi in Campagna; I am hesitant to start a rush (as having the garden practically to oneself is a treasured experience), but I am unselfish enough to want others to enjoy this perfectly bucolic, trattoria-in-the-Lazian-hills (but just outside London) experience.
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Barry
10 Overall rating
Food 9 | Service 10 | Atmosphere 10 | Value for money 10
Monday, May 25, 2009