DINING OUT - ENTERTAINMENT

La Piola

Not just eating out - it’s an ‘event’!

by Miss Terry Diner

La Piola is a new restaurant in Pattaya, but chef Roberto Ferin is no stranger to this area, having run L’Opera Restaurant at the Eastern Seaboard Industrial Estate for some years. The restaurant is a new concept for Pattaya, but one that Roberto will be only too pleased to explain to you.

First off, ‘La Piola’ means a ‘family’ restaurant, where the chef is the owner. In this case it means that Roberto is ‘it’ - the man who meets, greets, feeds and treats his customers to a never ending barrage of bonhomie, the like of which it is hard to imagine. Roberto is everywhere, and the restaurant does not just revolve around Roberto - it IS Roberto! On our evening, he met us at the door, waving a bandaged finger, “It’s a new slicing machine, she’s a very sharp!”

Before going into the concept of the restaurant, a word about the restaurant itself. It looks European with its patterned chequered floor tiles and light coloured natural wood tables and chairs, with brightly coloured place mats. Italian background music is there to remind you where you are, and along one wall is a wine collection, with Italian wines ranging in price between 660 baht to 6,000 baht. Next along the wall is an Italian coffee machine, which “costa fortune,” said Roberto. There is also another enclosed section just for people who want to drop in for a wine and a chat.

So now to Roberto’s concept. The restaurant serves antipasto dishes and main courses with pasta or risotto. Antipasto is 300 baht and the same price for mains. You can have one or the other, or both, if you’re hungry. The items in the antipasto change, as do the three main course dishes, which depend upon which ingredients are the best available at the markets that day, and what Roberto feels like cooking that evening.

The antipasto has 10 dishes, including several salami’s including a spicy salami from Calabria, Parma ham, vegetables in garlic olive oil and a most interesting rolled chicken with sage and Parma ham inside. By the way, this is real Parma ham, and Roberto showed us the official imprint to prove this was the genuine article!

We began with the antipasto, which is brought to the table on a wooden platter, with the hams and meats draped artfully over melon. Side dishes have the various vegetables and you just pick and eat (or should that be ‘pig’ and eat). Roberto’s own Focaccia bread and crusty loaf are there too, and we chose (or rather, Roberto chose) a Verdicchio wine, which is a not too sweet Italian summer wine, to go with it.

After a suitable pause we decided on the Italian risotto, which came with asparagus spears and saffron and gorgonzola cheese to be eaten with a delightful pork and a Sicilian style red snapper, which came surrounded by mussels. We had the B. 660 Don Giovanni Montepulciano d’Abruzzo red with these and it was an outstanding wine at the price.

The mains were excellent and we left just a smidgen of room for Roberto’s home made creamy Tiramisu, since it was obvious we were not going to be allowed home without trying it. (It was fabulous, by the way!)

By the time we had finished at La Piola, we found we had been eating and drinking for a solid three hours. We had collected a couple of new acquaintances at our table and we were all singing O Solo Mio with Roberto, while knocking back the Limoncello’s. This is not the restaurant for a quiet evening, but is one to go with a group and just sit back and let Roberto make it happen for you. In the words of our chef and host Roberto, “Justa letta me take a the responsibility for you for a da food. You make da big decisions all a day, now justa come and a relax!” It was a wonderful evening of dining out in Italy. Do go. Highly recommended.

La Piola, Pattaya Second Road, Tiffany Show complex, telephone 038 362 058, email [email protected], parking in the Tiffany compound.