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This week I took my mother Yvonne for lunch at Angelo’s on Avenham Street in the City Centre: a licensed restaurant that’s endured since the 1980s, despite the rise and fall of many other beloved Preston eateries.
Although I’ve lived in Preston for 50 plus years, I’ve only ever been there once before, for an excruciatingly awkward work’s Christmas do. They’re usually events during which a restaurant fails to shine as the menus shrink, the prices rise, and the expectations of the diners increase exponentially, only to wither on the vine when they realise they’re sat next to a line manager who’s eating his lamb shank like a pelican eating a pigeon. Don’t Google that, you’ll never sleep again.
Yvonne didn’t have an appetite, so we ordered one meal from the lunchtime offer of three courses for £26.90 with a side of cheesy garlic bread for £7.50. Not the cheapest of lunch deals, but the extensive menu featured a multitude of dishes with starters like shredded crispy duck, hoi sin, bean sprouts
and sesame seeds, and finest Scottish smoked salmon, prawns, salad leaves, marie rose sauce, served with bread and butter.
The mains included escalopes of pork wrapped with sage and Parma ham, cooked in a white wine sauce, and pheasant breast pan fried with lardons of pancetta, wild mushrooms and red wine, served with a truffle filled ravioli. There were also the usual pizza and pasta options, but as there were no supplements added on to the more interesting types of dishes, we decided to go for some of those.
Yvonne already knew the menu inside out, as she and Dry Tony used to regularly visit Pinocchio’s in Walton-Le-Dale – another restaurant from a local family-owned chain that includes San Marco’s, The Italian Orchard and Stratos. Pinocchio’s has been closed for a few years after a fire but is rumoured to be re-opening around November of this year, much to the joy of the locals.
I chose one of my favourite Italian dishes, fegatini alla veneziana, for my starter, but tentatively, because the chicken livers sautéed with onions are often overcooked in restaurants – presumably because the only thing worse than an unexpected mushroom snuggled up to your steak is a surprise side of Campylobacter hitching a ride on your chicken.
It’s a thin line that exists between serving perfectly cooked chicken livers and being on the wrong side of a food poisoning lawsuit, but the chef at Antonio’s walked that tightrope with absolute confidence, sending out a bowl full of the best fegatini alla veneziana I’ve had outside Italy.
As we’d asked for the starter, main and side to come at the same time the fegatini was, to my horror, placed in front of Yvonne who goes by the rule of possession = ownership. That meant I had to keep asking for some, which was a whole new power dynamic that will never be happening again. Garlic bread is a must with chicken livers, so we ate a slice each with it.
The main – fillets of lemon sole rolled and filled with seasoned spinach, served in a creamy asparagus and crayfish sauce with a crab filled ravioli – sounded lovely, but I wasn’t as keen on it as I’d hoped. We both agreed that, despite all of the ingredients being of good quality and beautifully cooked, the amount of spinach overpowered the delicate taste of the fish and sauce. The prawns were tasty albeit a smidge rubbery, and the accompanying fresh carrots, swede, broccoli and baby potatoes were beautifully cooked and a pleasure to eat.
I ended up leaving a third of my main course, not because there was anything wrong with it, but because there was a tiramisu in a fridge with my name on it. My name on the tiramisu, I mean, although I wouldn’t be opposed to having my name on the entire dessert fridge for charity or something. The lemon sole also just couldn’t compete with the chicken livers because nothing could. If Jolene from Dolly Parton’s epic song was a plate of chicken offal it would be out there taking everyone’s man, not just hers.
I’d ordered the garlic bread with cheese on because I’d been craving it for weeks and that also did not disappoint, being loaded with mozzarella and garlic. We’d had one slice each with great restraint and took the rest to go, so I could roll on it like a Labrador in the privacy of my own home. Unfortunately, my car broke down enroute and my garlic bread was towed away inside it. I presume it’s still in there, bringing excitement to the mechanic’s days as they try to figure out to whom that sweaty garlic smell belongs. Not me… and there will be no rolling on that pizza when it’s returned, hopefully. We’ll see.
The tiramisu was a lovely finish to our meal, although we’d have liked to taste more alcohol and coffee in it. Enough alcohol will ruin the taste of tiramisu for children under the age of 12, which is a bonus as they won’t be hanging around your table with their sticky spoons and their sticky eyes like they would if you had chocolate cake, and strong coffee is necessary to stop you slipping into a cake coma before you make it home.
Our lunch at Angelo’s was more expensive than most lunchtime deals but you really do get what you pay for in this friendly little Italian. It’s a fantastic option for anyone wanting a lunch that’s a bit more special than the usual speedy options, and the friendly staff don’t try to rush you out. I’d return for the fegatini alla veneziana alone, and advise anyone else with a love of that dish to pay Angelo’s a visit.
Have you ever got hammered off a large portion of tiramisu? Share your recipe in the comments below.
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