Pizza and… thunderstorm

Thursday afternoon

Mama Donna left a gift for my birthday on my desk the day before, scrummy brownies from a London based business specialising in gourmet brownies (she knows me too well), Bad Brownie and I just came back from M&S to get more birthday treats.

Sophie came up to wish me happy birthday and try the finger-licking brownies and a couple of hours later we ended up at L’Osteria enjoying the Gnocchi, half Braccio di Ferro (spinach, egg, cheese and garlic) and half Vegetariana pizza (mozzarella, grilled vegetables, mushrooms and garlic) and a glass of Chianti.

She wanted to try the food there since I recommended it after the first ever time I visited about a month ago and she suggested going that night after work. Spontaneous invite, delicious food, chats and making new friends, some of my most favourite things in the whole wide world, I couldn’t possibly say no.  It rained on our way there, just like last time…

Back to a month ago, my first time at L’Osteria (I’ve been meaning to post about it since but life got in the way)

Saturday afternoon, 21st of April

I just came home from lunch on the Ventura. I had a couple of glasses of wine and I feel so tired I can go to sleep and not get out of bed until tomorrow.

But I’m meeting a friend for dinner in about two hours. What should I do? I can cancel I guess. I don’t always stick to a plan. My plans change depending on what I really fancy doing at that moment in time. The perks of getting older, only do what you want and consciously choose to ignore social pressures…

After an excruciating half an hour of overthinking, desperately trying to figure out what I really wanted to do, God sometimes is agonisingly painful to be me, I decided I’d go for dinner. I’d like to see my friend and we were to try the pizza at L’Osteria, the pizza place at the Watermark my Italian friend Sofy recommended, ‘The closest to Italian pizza you can find in Southampton’ she said.

In the end I’m glad I went.

It was very busy. I’ve unsuccessfully attempted to make a booking the day before, but it was impossible as you’d expect on a Saturday night and the restaurant was fully booked until 9:30pm, but the lovely manager on the phone suggested I’ll have better luck just showing up.

We did just show up but there was going to be a 25min wait unless we sat outside. It wasn’t that cold so we decided to have our pizza al fresco.

As there was a large selection of pizzas I couldn’t possibly decide, I thought I’d go for two different halves and after a long deliberation I went for the Capricciosa (ham, mushrooms, artichokes and olives) and the Il Vecchietto (mozarella, egg, pancetta, onions, rosemary and piccante). My friend went for the Hawaiian and not sure what the other half was, I was so surprised he willingly decided to have pineapple on a pizza I can’t recall what he said after ‘half Haiwaiian’…

Since I’ve started the day with a couple of glasses of red I decided to stick to it so I asked my lovely waitress to pick a glass of red for me and she went for Chianti, now one of my favourite red wines. I’d never tried it before but it was smooth, and extremely easy to drink.

After about an hour or so enjoying our HUGE pizzas, wine and plenty of laughs, it started to rain… followed by thunder… and lightning. We moved to a table further in so we don’t get wet and we spent most of the evening watching the thunderstorm. Scary but fascinating.

That’s how I imagined the end of the world would be. Thunders, lightning followed by flying prawns, unicorns and other random objects, like a scene off The Good Place… (sometimes it’s really fun to be me)…

L’Osteria is now one of the very few chains I love. Delicious food and wine, great selection, super friendly staff and  reasonable prices.

I have to visit L’Osteria again to try their pasta this time! I can’t promise you any out of the ordinary weather related spectacles, but the Italian language lessons on speakers in the toilet are amusing AND educating (did you know that in Italy they only drink Cappuccino until noon and Espresso in the afternoon?)  and the pizza will not disappoint.

Namaste

Eleni