Casa Dino Restaurant — Restaurant in London

The setting, ambience and staff are really nice - and should make for a charming neighbourhood restaurant in a street filled with lovely eateries.

However, the menu is worthy of a particularly soulless Harvester, and not at all Italian (calamari with wasabi?). Whilst advertising 'Life is all about trying new pasta...' on the sandwich board outside it bizarrely has virtually no pasta on the menu. No pasta as a starter option. The starters of prawns and calamari were both from frozen and only just cooked enough - both with a small drop of sauce - not enough for the dish, and again lacking entirely in flavour. My arancini were cold and tasted of nothing - they needed a strong hit of lemon.

My sea bass (again local which is good but in no way Italian) suggested it was on a bed of cauliflower puree but I could hardly find it so the dish was desperately boring. An uninspiring beef ragu was part of the set menu and certainly no homemade pasta anywhere. By far the best thing all evening were the two bowls of chips.

A terrible tiramisu (cold wet sponge with cold custard - no booze, no coffee) and a madly solid - again cold - ball of panna cotta filled with gelatine. Sadly the food seemed cooked by someone who doesn't enjoy flavour or cooking.

The other thing which was a bit odd was we were constantly asked if the food was nice, (by our 3 waiters - another of my bugbears) after every course and again at the end. It wasn't but we certainly couldn't or wouldn't say at the time and especially as we weren't paying - a totally bizarre question to ask. We won't be...

Ordered crab and avocado salad with lemon dressing. Avocado was mostly dark grey / black. The tiny amount of crab, perhaps a teaspoon? Doesn’t warrant the title of ‘crab’ salad. The dressing was only discovered after finding it on the bottom of the bowel. A blond hair with food attached was pulled from the salad. The size of the cutlery, similar to airline cutlery, was annoying and stupid. Just as it is silly and annoying on airplanes. I also ordered the Burrata Pugliese with pesto. The menu description said ‘creamy burrata’. It was actually dry and firm. Not creamy at all. They also forgot to include any pesto. The tiny tomatoes where completely flavourless. While we sat outside, it took ages to get the attention of the waitress. Had to go in and pay as gave up waiting. The cold attitude of the waitress may have been caused by me asking for some normal sized cutlery, which they didn't have and acted as tho I had dared to question their amazing idea. A stupid restaurant with poor service with food that bares little resemblance to menu...

One would so much like to say nice things about this place because the staff are charming, the welcome warm and the ambience delightful. But oh dear, the food! A bland menu of bland listless food lacking colour, flavour and even heat. An empty teapot containing . . . a tea bag! Do they really think we are that gullible. Come on chaps. You can do a lot better. Do better cooking and formulate a decent menu. Then you would be able to justify your prices. Concentrate to start with on just two or three dishes but do them perfectly. Let’s see the chef. Make hot things hot, crisp things crisp. Avoid greasiness. Add flavour, colour, home-made bread fresh from the oven, plentiful and nutritious ingredients, and use fresh rather than prepared frozen products. Serve things with the necessary accompaniments in generous portions rather than listing tiny side dishes. And please let us know when you are really in business producing reputable fresh Italian food and we’ll be delighted to return to what is after all a...