Los Amigos; Restaurant Review

Restaurant Review
First published Hampshire Chronicle 25th July 2006

Los Amigos, 72 St George’s Street, Winchester, 01962 869966

Two foodie friends have become a palatable pair – at Los Amigos restaurant, St George’s Street, Winchester.

City diners are used to the sight of a restaurant on the corner – until recently Lillos – and the two friends, Vincenzo and Carlos, are two former employees who decided to strike out on their own.

Los Amigos is Spanish for “friends”, and reflects Vincenzo and Carlos’ own relationship. Taking the best from their years in the business, they’ve created a unique Mediterranean menu which adopts the créme of both Spanish and Italian cuisine.

Vincenzo found us a table on opening night, when he was fully booked and barely prepared. Nevertheless, the personal attention was impressive. He delivered olives and garlic bread, freshly prepared and designed to tease the taste buds.We followed that with a shared starter, the mozzarella en carroza, pan-friend mozzarella cheese served with delicious marinara sauce and fresh salad.

My husband and I followed with sardinas a la plancha, an odd choice for both of us, as we are not really fish fans. But it was a real test of the food – if something you know you don’t like turns out good, the restaurant must have something going for it. Los Amigos passed the test. The beautifully cooked and tasty fish was veritably devoured.

As an American Italian by birth, my standards were too impossibly high to try one of the pasta dishes, but I sampled my husband’s Vitello de la Milanese and was pleasantly surprised. Main course for me was pato a la campera, duck breast, served with baked black cherries. I was especially impressed by the vegetables, full of flavour and cooked ‘al dente’ – a culinary technique so often missed in England.

From the perspective of a former New York waitress, I know that one can never judge a restaurant from a single experience. So a week later we returned to give Vincenzo and Carlos another run for their money.

On that occasion we ordered the calamari to start, which was a little salty, but still delicious when combined with the marinara dip from the fried mozzarella tapas. This was followed by Carlos' trademark seafood paella for me. My husband, being a little more conservative this time, tried the solomillo de lomo, pork steaks cooked with melted cheese and spinach. It tasted delicious.We washed this down with a bottle of Tempranillo from the inexpensive, but appealing, wine list.

The overall impression of Los Amigos is overwhelmingly good. Vincenzo and Carlos both put their hearts and souls into their restaurant, and the personal attention along with the delicious, inexpensive food, suggest that they are going to be here to stay, offering high standards of cooking without the gourmet price tag.

The friends are usually on hand, and invite suggestions to improve their menu. But my suggestion is to make your reservations now, before the restaurant becomes too popular.

–Tina Hulme

Dylan Moran stand-up review

Moran more like... totally consistent

REVIEW: Dylan Moran, Like Totally…. Theatre Royal, Winchester
First published 1st June 2006

TICKETS to Dylan Moran's latest stand-up show entitled Like Totally… at the Theatre Royal,Winchester, sold out before they’d even gone on general sale at the box office.

Not surprisingly since Moran is a comedian with enormous appeal. Many people know him through his sell-out stand-up shows. Even more know him from staring roles in Black Books and Shaun of the Dead.

Rarely does a comedian promise so much and consistently deliver. He is a rare thing – a performer who always produces value for money. From the moment his show opened, the audience were hooked.We laughed at the scripted magic of his “You could be in worse places….” and we snorted equally at his
improvised jabs at hecklers and latecomers. His humour was not tasteless, nor deliberately politically
incorrect.

The message was: Take a look at the world and have a good laugh. It was the improvisation that really made the experience special. Dylan Moran can entertain football stadiums of people.

However, at the Theatre Royal, there was a certain intimacy that made us all believe that Moran was speaking to us personally. Parts of his material he'd tailored specifically for Winchester. There were no boring or stagnant parts of the show. He spared no person or nationality when poking fun.

Bursts of laughter and rolls of giggling accompanied such killer lines as: "Speaking in German is like typing on tin foil.” The next moment Moran was poking fun of his own Irish nationatility by claiming: “The Irish
can't look cool. All Irishmen have the same face.” He even targeted my nationality by questioning how
American’s could possibly elect Arnold Schwarzenegger as Governor of California – although I'm still
trying to figure that one out myself!

The audience was delighted with a double treat, since the back drop of the stage was set with a rolling slide show of Dylan Moran's drawings.

Normally I would have thought his drawings were too simple. However, they had a unique appeal. Each drawing had in-depth subject matter, some disturbing, some humorous. Though his works were simply
child-like line drawings, as a former art student, I found them oddly appealing.

Could it be that Dylan Moran, comedian, will become Dylan Moran, artist?

All in all, the Theatre Royal Winchester proved the perfect venue for the genius of Dylan Moran.

-Tina Hulme