No. of times out and about today – 0 (I don’t count walking the dogs as I’m too busy watching what they’re doing to be looking to see if people are staring)

For a country that prides itself on its culinary expertise, I am sometimes amazed by the crap food that the Italians will put up with.  OK, so not completely crap, but, in my opinion, far less than the best.

Take, for instance, Japanese and Chinese restaurants.  Many of them will do both Japanese and Chinese with, often, a pizza oven thrown in.

It is my opinion that, unless you’re doing fusion food (where, anyway, the idea is to mix flavours from different cuisines), you cannot be good at more than one type and Japanese and Chinese aren’t really similar.

So, most of the time, going to one of these restaurants leaves me disappointed with the end result.  Sure, you can get one or two really good dishes, maybe, but the rest are just mediocre at best.

I mean to say, one wouldn’t go to an Indian restaurant and expect to be provided with, say, pizza – that would just be bizarre, so why do it with Japanese and Chinese?

Anyway, and apologies to A, should he read this, but Taiyo, Via Plinio 72, although above average, wasn’t that good a restaurant.  The one, really good dish was the seared tuna with sesame seeds – the rest was more mediocre.  Its big advantage was that it wasn’t so expensive but then, as I always say, you do get what you pay for with food, generally.

Still, it was a nice evening and I enjoyed the company, which is the most important part.

Anyway, let me not limit this to Chinese/Japanese – it also applies to Italian regional restaurants.  There are a couple of Tuscan restaurants near me, for example, one of which is less than mediocre (A & I went there a week or two back) and another that is OK but, if you compared it to a good restaurant in Tuscany itself, well……..there is really no comparison.  Although a friend who I was with on Sunday morning (taking coffee at a bar before walking the dogs) suggested one called (I think) il Bimbo in Viale Abruzzi as a true and very good Tuscan restaurant with excellent service to boot.  Bet it’s expensive though but I’ll have to try it.

By the way, the weather turned during the night.  It is now cold (I have socks and shoes on – which would have pleased the online guy I mentioned before) and it has been raining on and off all day.  It’s down to the low 20s and I am thinking of putting a jumper on.  On the plus side, the electrician came today and put up my four wall/ceiling lights.  The one in the lounge which is an old Art Deco one looks so beautiful – I wish we had put it up when we were in the UK, we just never got around to it.