Paperinos

Byers Road, West End, Glasgow

visited 20/11/10


I have had quite a few work-related dinners recently which were not a good experience. Restaurants take a booking for a party and then leave you drinking cheap, bad house wine for an hour until they manage to get some mediocre food out with the assistance of a heat lamp (New Bell, Edinburgh), or fail to deliver more than two courses in the allotted 2 hours for our table of 14 and then boot us out to resell the tables (Stravaigin, Glasgow)

So Paparinos came as a pleasant surprise. It's a big, bright Italian with a lot of families eating there. The service was quick and faultless. It just serves standard Italian things so I stuck to simple stuff. The calamari was freshly fried, not greasy, tender and fairly well-flavoured (a bit too salty to tell). Then penne arabbiata--the pasta correctly cooked, the sauce the right note of spiciness and richness, and the right amounts of both. I also had a slightly limp green salad with came with capers and an artichoke heart out of jar (but not with the overpowering vinegar that this approach usually brings). We had some neutral but drinkable Montepulciano (the house red).

Paperinos is a good bet for some reasonable food for a party who want to talk and need to be served quickly--it's not a gastronomic adventure but it fits the bill nicely.