Toscanos

"Life is a combination of magic and pasta." - Federico Fellini

I’m an ultra-lazy person on Saturdays. After working for 5 days a week and travelling close to 100 kilometres on road, all I want to do on a Saturday is just laze around at home and do nothing productive at all. This Saturday, however, I realised that it had been long since I had reinvigorated my taste buds with some authentic Italian food. I had heard a lot of good reviews about Toscanos and given the fact that its just a stone’s throw away from where I live, I decided to give it a shot.

Toscanos is your typical Italian restaurant with a typical Italian ambience- simple, classy and spick and span. We decided to go for a full-fledged three course meal.

Toscano Signature Salad

Starters: We ordered the Toscano Signature Salad and boy what a salad it was. It contained apricots, fresh figs, roasted peppers, haricots, tomatoes, tossed in red wine olive oil and served with goat cheese and mixed with greens drizzled with Balsamic. Phew! Of all the exotic ingredients in this salad, the one that caught my attention was the goat cheese. It was as fresh as ever and took the overall taste of the salad to a different level altogether. Who ever thought that just a cube of cheese could do a world of a difference to a salad? Besides, I have never eaten a salad with apricots in it before. Trust the Italians to come with such innovative ideas for their salad.

Risotto ai Porcini

Main Course: Dad is a vegetarian who is not too fond of pasta and pizza. Hence he ordered the Risotto ai Porcini – which is nothing but Italian rice with stewed Porcini Mushrooms, Parmesan cheese and cooked in extra virgin olive oil. I strongly feel that the dish didn’t go down too well with my Dad and the fact that Dad left almost one fourth of the dish untouched speaks for itself.



Linguine Aglio e olio fruiti di Marie

I am a sea-food lover and hence ordered the Linguine Aglio e olio fruiti di Marie- a long complicated name for a rather simple pasta. In plain words, its pasta with prawns, mussels nd fish cooked in “extra virgin olive oil” of course. The fish was very delicately cooked and by far the best component of the pasta. I couldn’t particularly enjoy the pasta because I still haven’t learnt to eat it without making a mess out of it.

Lemon Cheesecake

Dessert: The dessert can be easily dubbed as the Hero of the meal. The Lemon Cheesecake was served with the best vanilla ice cream and luscious red strawberries. Every bite of it was sheer bliss. Not to forget, it was served and decorated with excellent artistry skills.

Fine dining is an experience in itself. It goes beyond the food that is served at your table. The ambience, the service, the cutlery and even the most granular of the details of the restaurant, are all designed to make the diner feel important and special. It is self-indulgence at its max and does come with a large price tag. So when you are in a mood to pamper your gastronomical side, do not hesitate. I would give Toscanos a 4/5. A meal such as the one above can easily come up to 1500 Rupees.