8 Church Street, Cardiff. www.italigo.com
Open since April, and early enough that you can drop in and eat pasta or calzones for breakfast if you choose, Italigo’s more-or-less USP is ‘Italian fast food’. There are, I suspect, mental and/or cultural blocks that make this problematic for some. Italian cooking is (stereotypically) thought of as prizing slowness and patience, whereas you can pop in here and have your meal within five minutes. If you order a quicker pizza, you’re probably in a kebab house, and if you order quicker pasta, it probably went from your fridge to the microwave. Obviously, Italigo are attempting to up the ante somewhat, but how do they fare?
My two afternoon visits, both alone to affect the air of a high flyer on the go and definitely not because I have no friends, present me with nice untreated wooden decor and not very many other customers. From the pizza menu, I order a Tina – crispy pancetta, free range egg and rocket. It’s pretty good – the tomato sauce is substantial and tastes of actual tomatoes – and seems much less salty than the pepperoni one Buzz sampled previously, plus its base is crispy without tipping over into cream cracker consistency.
Two days later I pop back for some pasta bolognese, on a ‘by your basics shall ye be judged’ tip. There’s nothing much wrong with it, apart from being somewhat stingy with the parmesan, but it’s where one’s Britishness kicks in, in that I keep thinking I could make this at home. It’s still better fast food than most of Cardiff city centre’s other options right now, though. Also, I can’t really review a can of fizzy pop, but I just want to give a shout out to lemon San Pellegrino. NOEL GARDNER