Da Maria — Restaurant in London

Da Maria is a wonderful little Italian restaurant, only a stones throw from Notting Hill Gate underground station.

It felt as though we had been invited into the home of an Italian family for home cooking. We experienced the warmest of welcomes and all the staff were extremely friendly. The decor is homely and shows a lot of love for Napoli football club.

The food, (which is arguably the most important part of any restaurant/cafe) did not disappoint and was possibly the best traditional Italian food I've ever eaten. The menu is not too overcrowded, but still contains a nice collection of Italian favourites. The starters were excellent, I would definitely recommend the Arancini. The food arrived in very good time. Then the pizza was phenomenal. Real fresh ingredients, a thin base with a stone baked style crispy crust, and the tomato sauce base was easily the best I've ever tasted.

After finishing our Pizza, me and my fiancee decided to order a second pizza to share, which was equally as amazing.

I couldn't recommend this place enough. If you happen to walk past, it could be quite easy to decide to continue on to somewhere bigger. But it would be a huge mistake. I've not travelled to this area much, buy I definitely intend to return as soon as possible.

Usually I would always try and leave at least one negative point, no matter how good the restaurant/cafe. But I honestly cannot fault anything through my own...

Went for lunch at around 12:30 on a Saturday. I was alone. The place was empty and I took a micro table near the door. The atmosphere is good enough with lively Neapolitan songs blasting away and the server and cook singing in the background. I ordered a margarita pizza and a beer. The pizza was a monumental letdown, it was grossly undercooked and not resembling at all the crispy pizza in the pics on Google reviews. Ingredients were below average with passata sauce very bitter, hard mozzarella cheese, very little oil and low quality cured meat. A single old leaf of basil adorned the pitiful and small pizza. The dough was soggy and soft, a far cry from the one you see in the pics of the others. It is also tiny. Anyway. In the meantime another table of two Spanish ladies came in and ordered pasta with some mushroom sauce. They seemed underwhelmed by the food too, the portions again minuscule. The only bright spot is the crafted beer which was superb albeit a bit pricey. I paid 21 quid for it all and it felt like armed robbery. I would not recommend this place at all if you like pizza and like to eat. The location in the end is nothing special and very crowded by the myriad of tourists who flock to Notthing Hill for some obscure reason to me. Despite a large crowd constantly walking and crossing the intersection this place was empty. That tells...

Before I start, if you go to this restaurant... ASK FOR THE RECEIPT BEFORE YOU PAY. They add on a lot and try and prompt you to tap your phone/card without looking at the card reader.

I've actually never left a google review before but I felt the need for this place. I went in with high hopes because the interior is beautiful, the football was on, it felt authentic and the problems I'd heard about like no working toilet isn't something that bothers me too much.

Some of the reviews mentioned that the food was frozen and it's not hard to see why. Everything took very little time to come out, was piping hot and yet still somehow didn't seem properly cooked. Felt microwaved. The food itself was entirely flavourless. Below the layer of cheese on the top, my pasta tasted completely unseason. Like it literally tasted like the pasta that you only ever try when you're testing how cooked your pasta is when cooking at home. We had to put a lot of salt on every dish to make it worth eating. The bread was completely stale. The beer had small frozen bits in it and fizzed out everywhere when I first tried to drink just as you'd expect from a beer that's just been pulled out the freezer.

To cap it all off, they tried to make us pay £20 more than we should have and the prices aren't cheap to begin with. Probably my worst restaurant...