Giovanni Moro's Momma's Dinner, Saturday 20 September 2008

As we have seldom done Italian cuisine, I thought it would be an idea this month to try out Giovanni Moro's momma's cooking, which is what is on offer at La Pignata, Spielhagenstraße 2, 10585 Berlin-Charlottenburg. This is a very small, almost boutique restaurant where Hr Moro is often around to personally delight in welcoming, advising and making suggestions for diners. It is a traditional place, very authentic, and does not even have its own proper website, and the only English review I can find is on http://www.toytowngermany.com/berlin/la_pignata.html which was done in 2003 and is just as valid today! If nothing else, it proves that this restaurant has been around a while and still going strong.

As mentioned, this is a tiny restaurant and large bookings do tend to make Hr Moro rather twitchy, so although he did kindly grant us a large table in the end, he did also request that we can meet the full booking as he would lose business otherwise. So in return, I would really like that you check that you can definitely make it for this evening before you write in to make a booking.

So, the night planned for September's dinner is on Saturday, 20 September 2008, and please get your emails in by Wednesday, 17 September. We will then see if we need to do a random electronic selection as the places available are really quite limited. Final list will be confirmed via email by Thursday morning, 18 September. Again, I know this is pretty short notice but I am now working for my tiny crust outside Germany so it is a lot more tricky to find new interesting places in Berlin while I am away. But I keep trying every time I can escape back to Berlin.

See you soon!

Chris

How it went on the night...

It was a nice cosy little Italian restaurant with just one fully packed dining room and we were sitting all at a long table. The owner offered us a 4-course menu that most of us picked. Along with the menu they suggested some red and white house wine that in my opinion was okay but not brilliant. The four course dinner started with several platters of antipasti. Among those have been a plate of nicely thin sliced Italian parma ham, mushrooms, lentils (interestingly prepared), vitello tomato, the best ever mozarella, big bean and squid. With it came some homemade bread and some very nice olive oil to dip the bread in. The second course where some kind of ravioli with artichockes (of which I tasted very little) in a sort of a cream sauce. The third course was either meat or fish. I went for the meat and that was roast beef over savoy cabbage. I must say I was not convinced about this dish and the fish - wolf fish - would have been the better choice for me. For dessert we got some kind of pancakes filled with a nut cream along with some chocolate sauce and fruits.

The group was not so mixed this time. We had only one proper English speaker, Oliver, and a Spanish speaker Manuel. So it was in a certain way a very German evening.

In general the owners restaurant of the restaurant have been very charming (Sophie ate for free!) but I would have expected a free Grappa or Amaretto as you usually get in Italien restaurant. Overall, I would say it was a very good evening and everybody had some nice chats.