Those TV advertisements for pasta sauce and butter substitutes sometimes remind me of meals in the Italian household where I au-paired years ago. But no, as it happened, we did not sit around a scrubbed pine table three generations at a time, eating hearty dishes of pasta and bread smothered in olive oil spread.
Instead, Anna, the mother, would eat an onion, two courgettes and a handful of string beans, boiled for about five minutes and served straight up. The father and son preferred to have raw mince meat, made into thin patties and eaten chilled with a tiny drizzle of oil. They hardly ever ate pasta and would have shuddered at most of the dishes you'd encounter on a typical Italian menu in Ireland. Italian cuisine Irish-style is all about creamy pasta, pizzas and lashings of garlic bread. It is not really healthy eating, and there is no use kidding ourselves that just because there's olive oil somewhere in it, it must be good for the heart.
At the Vino Pasta restaurant in Greystones, little smiling hearts beside several dishes are supposed to denote "healthy specials" but you'd have to take them with a big pinch of low-sodium salt. Pan-fried garlic mushrooms? Prawn salad? Carbonara sauce with cream? Pan-fried chicken with cream or olive oil? Could these really be especially healthy choices, and are they authentic Italian dishes?
No matter; they are what people want. Your average Irish diner does like a creamy sauce and the other thing he or she likes is a good generous portion, and no suggestion of fancy plates with a tiny bit of something in the middle and fresh air all around. Vino Pasta knows this and serves up big portions. And where the menu says "large" you want to watch out. A man at the table next to us got a fillet steak the size of a trilby hat, and he finished it too. That was the large fillet steak at £15.95. Vino Pasta was recommended by three different people in as many weeks and, though it's not new, its reputation is growing. One of the recommendations was from a Dutch restaurant critic who toured Ireland during the summer and said that the best meal she had in two weeks was at Vino Pasta. So, roping in a colleague from Greystones and his wife, we set forth on a Tuesday evening having booked earlier in the day. At the door there was a short queue of people, one or two of whom were making eyes at the one free table, which happened to be ours, so we sat down quickly and then looked around.
It's a homely, kitschy sort of place - trattoria meets Swiss chalet - with beams everywhere, fretted racks suspended from the ceiling and walls covered in painted plates. It is warm and buzzy and has just the right atmosphere for a neighbourhood restaurant. The service is terribly efficient, and we were no sooner seated than the menus were passed around and the wine was being ordered - Frascati for the ladies, and the men splashing out in a rather greedy way with a bottle of rich red Amarone.
Great big slices of fresh bread were delivered by a harried waitress who came back quickly to take our order. While the service is brisk, you don't get the feeling that they are trying to get you out and get more people in. The menu is predictable - Arrabiata this, Capricciosa that, gorgonzola the other, but there is a blackboard with daily specials, and these sounded a bit more unusual.
I had a crab and avocado starter that was about twice as big as it needed to be and was also too expensive at £5.95. I got two nicely-ripe avocado halves with about three mouthfuls of crab and a good deal of salad and pink sauce. Peter's prawn salad looked remarkably similar, while Moira's warm goat's cheese salad was, she said, very very good. It had a generous amount of melting cheese and lots of croutons. Spiedini di Gamberoni dell `Tiger' sounded exciting and was translated as tiger prawns with olive oil and garlic. There was plenty of oil and garlic but the prawns were less than tigerish - pretty weeny, in fact.
After the starter and the bread we were all beginning to feel a bit full but as soon as the plates were cleared the main courses arrived piping hot and gorgeous to look at.
I had spaghetti with homemade pesto sauce, my all-time favourite dish. The Vino Pasta version is very thick and creamy and tasted like a good-quality commercial pesto mixed with cream. The real thing does not need cream at all. Parmesan had to be asked for and then the waitress reappeared promptly with one of those turn-handle kitchen graters. You get a few swift turns, a deluge of finely grated parmesan and then it's gone.
Peter and David both ordered monkfish with peppers and were asked if they wanted it cooked in oil or cream. This was a lovely dish with lots of colourful julienne peppers and brilliant white chunks of tender monkfish. Moira's Polla Arrabiata looked stunning - a steaming mass of chicken, thinly sliced, with tomatoes, garlic, onion and chilli. The Italians would have stopped there, but again a big slosh of cream was thrown in to make it extra delicious, if not life-extending.
All the food was served on big colourful plates that looked like American fiesta ware.
We left a long gap before dessert and coffees and were able to watch a genuinely touching family scene going on outside. A lady who had had her dinner was led outside by her children and grandchildren - or maybe nieces and nephews - and handed the keys to a brand new car with lots of hugs and kisses thrown in. The staff had known about it all along and almost the entire restaurant looked on smiling. We shared two desserts. Rhubarb crumble was only so-so - the crumble bit was good and home-made but the rhubarb was wincingly sour. The Baileys Bombe on the other hand was excellent - a small glistening mound covered in thin white chocolate with a rich icecream inside and alcoholic stuff oozing out of the middle. It was gone in about a minute flat.
Espresso and cappucino were good but Moira's sambuca arrived unlit, which spoils the indulgence of it.
If you are going to eat here, have a good brisk walk over Bray Head first, or at least go for a stroll on the beach to work up an appetite.
The bill for four, including three bottles of wine, two mineral waters and three coffees came to £135.65
Vino Pasta, Church Road, Greystones, Co Wicklow (01-2874807). Open seven days
