Vini & Cucina
Steenweg op Waterloo / Chaussée de Waterloo 86 - 41180 - Ukkel/Uccle - Brussel/Bruxelles
by Lavin
The place that leaves you wanting.
The restaurant looks good, with a modern-looking chocolate colour wall to absorb the light from the spot lamps, mixed with spacious wooden and metallic racks holding boxes and bottles of wine. The tables were a bit too close to your neighbours, but overall it was nice and cosy for a restaurant with very little window space. It didn't feel claustrophobic or dawdy, and the noise was at agreeably Med levels (i.e. you could hear the buzz, but you didn't have to shout to hold a conversation).
Equally, the waiters were nice, didn't mix up the orders -they mixed up the wine, but they rectified on the spot-, and were attentive and unobstrusive.
So then, why oh why, when your decoration, your service, your location and even the name of your restaurant is so right, can your menu not deviate an iota from the menus of run-down pizza&pasta places with tacky decoration, and even tackier furniture, to where tourists flock en masse? I read the menu once, and I could have repeated it without hesitation, repetition or deviation, because I've seen it countless times in the centre of each and every town. I am sorry, but this will just not do. I want something better, exciting, something that keeps me in thrall while I imagine what it would taste like, something that would make me book my next dinner before I even got the dessert. Italian cuisine, is not just pizza & pasta, which take less than 5% of all recipes in my Italian cooking books.
Does this mean that the restaurant was not good? Not at all. I had a very decent Bruschetta that though they were smaller than Weetabix, they packed a lot of taste and some other savoury appetizers that also seemed fit for Lilliputian children. My pizza, however, was fit for Gargantua after fasting for a week, it had a better-than-average home-made dough, and the three quarters of which I managed to gulp down were delicious.
I further remember ingesting undue amounts of very good white and red wine -a good Montepulciano if I remember well-, and that I was talking more than usual with some very good friends, including the mama of one of them, who gave the dinner a distinctly family reunion flavour. The icing of the cake was a very good espresso. I never saw the bill, because as well as being very interesting people, my friends are also extremely nice, and didn't let me pay, but let me just say that it was good value for money.
However, sometimes people have the restaurants they deserve. I suspect that if the owner of Vini & Cucina (great name, many namesakes around the world) upgrades the menu and starts offering, I don't know, fresh anchovies on a bed of pasta baked in the oven, or a decent risotto, or some nice dish from any of the three main Sicilian sub-types of cuisine, he/she might have the emptiest Italian restaurant in town, because when it comes to food -and trust me on this-, it's very difficult for many people to stray off their comfort zone.
Let me put it like this. The bathroom, which according to a friend of mine is a very good rule of thumb to find out how good a restaurant is, had a very good-looking Villeroy&Bosch-alike sink, but the tap was from a DIY shop. So close, and yet so far.
Verdict: 4/5. The kitchen that could have been Queen.
Legend:
5/5 Kitchen scene in The Postman always Rings Twice with Jack Nicholson and Jessica Lange.
4/5 Chic Kitchen.
3/5 Kitch kitchen.
2/5 Marx Brothers' kitchen.
1/5 Devil's kitchen.
by Lavin
The place that leaves you wanting.
The restaurant looks good, with a modern-looking chocolate colour wall to absorb the light from the spot lamps, mixed with spacious wooden and metallic racks holding boxes and bottles of wine. The tables were a bit too close to your neighbours, but overall it was nice and cosy for a restaurant with very little window space. It didn't feel claustrophobic or dawdy, and the noise was at agreeably Med levels (i.e. you could hear the buzz, but you didn't have to shout to hold a conversation).
Equally, the waiters were nice, didn't mix up the orders -they mixed up the wine, but they rectified on the spot-, and were attentive and unobstrusive.
So then, why oh why, when your decoration, your service, your location and even the name of your restaurant is so right, can your menu not deviate an iota from the menus of run-down pizza&pasta places with tacky decoration, and even tackier furniture, to where tourists flock en masse? I read the menu once, and I could have repeated it without hesitation, repetition or deviation, because I've seen it countless times in the centre of each and every town. I am sorry, but this will just not do. I want something better, exciting, something that keeps me in thrall while I imagine what it would taste like, something that would make me book my next dinner before I even got the dessert. Italian cuisine, is not just pizza & pasta, which take less than 5% of all recipes in my Italian cooking books.
Does this mean that the restaurant was not good? Not at all. I had a very decent Bruschetta that though they were smaller than Weetabix, they packed a lot of taste and some other savoury appetizers that also seemed fit for Lilliputian children. My pizza, however, was fit for Gargantua after fasting for a week, it had a better-than-average home-made dough, and the three quarters of which I managed to gulp down were delicious.
I further remember ingesting undue amounts of very good white and red wine -a good Montepulciano if I remember well-, and that I was talking more than usual with some very good friends, including the mama of one of them, who gave the dinner a distinctly family reunion flavour. The icing of the cake was a very good espresso. I never saw the bill, because as well as being very interesting people, my friends are also extremely nice, and didn't let me pay, but let me just say that it was good value for money.
However, sometimes people have the restaurants they deserve. I suspect that if the owner of Vini & Cucina (great name, many namesakes around the world) upgrades the menu and starts offering, I don't know, fresh anchovies on a bed of pasta baked in the oven, or a decent risotto, or some nice dish from any of the three main Sicilian sub-types of cuisine, he/she might have the emptiest Italian restaurant in town, because when it comes to food -and trust me on this-, it's very difficult for many people to stray off their comfort zone.
Let me put it like this. The bathroom, which according to a friend of mine is a very good rule of thumb to find out how good a restaurant is, had a very good-looking Villeroy&Bosch-alike sink, but the tap was from a DIY shop. So close, and yet so far.
Verdict: 4/5. The kitchen that could have been Queen.
Legend:
5/5 Kitchen scene in The Postman always Rings Twice with Jack Nicholson and Jessica Lange.
4/5 Chic Kitchen.
3/5 Kitch kitchen.
2/5 Marx Brothers' kitchen.
1/5 Devil's kitchen.
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