Henley

We had a bit of a mixed experience at our local Strada….this is how we found our meal.

Firstly our waitress seemed to be having a bad day. She was snippy, sullen & pretty unhelpful - not at all what we might expect from a staff member at Strada. She didn’t seem to believe that we were there to try the new menu even though we had the voucher and we were made to feel like we were an annoyance to her. Had we been paying customers, we would have been most unhappy.

But that aside, on to the food!
Firstly the Schiacciatella flat bread was wonderful - crisp & buttery with just the right amount of salt & aromatic rosemary. Along with the Olives & the fabulous Meze board, this made a truly great sharing starter for myself & my guests. The meze board was served on a slate square & had some lovely meats, really creamy mozzerella & a tapenade, which was nice, but slighty low in flavour compared to other tapenades I have enjoyed.

Next the mains. I had the Saltimbocca Maiale, which was tasty, but the piece of pork fillet was very large & thicker that I thought it might be. I couldn’t eat it all,as it was slightly chewy. the topping of sage leafs & crispy parma ham was great ,the mash was creamy & delicious & the green beans beautifully cooked. Star of the show for me though was the sage butter sauce, which brought the flavours on the plate together beautifully.
My husband had the Orato Al Forno, which was impressive to look at, had a deep & crispy skin with succulent flesh inside. he enjoyed it immensely. My daughter loved her pizza, particularly praising the artichokes which were large, plentiful & juicy.
Sadly my second daughter had to order from the main menu as there were no Vegetarian options on the taster menu - something that should probably be addressed.

On to the desserts. We had all 3 & loved them all for varying reasons. Our particular favourite was the Affogato, with its contrasting hot & cold parts. The coffee poured on top was amazing!
The Bunet Piemontese was also very nice indeed& we found that all 3 desserts made for a great end to our meal.

So to conculde - very good food & a well thought out menu with an Autumnal feel, although a veggie option in the mains would have been nice & the service could have been MUCH better.
Thanks Strada ,we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.

We visited the resturant where we received a warm welcome and was shown to our seats straight away, we was asked what we wanted from the menu, I said as far as I know we are meant to be sampling all the dishes on the reviewers list, the waiter went away looking confused then returned saying we were a day early and that it had to be used on the 7th dec..I showed him where it said use by 7th..he then seemed to know what was happening.

We really enjoyed the olives and the flat bread was cooked to perfection it tasted so nice I haven't stopped talking about it. The Antipasto was presented perfectly on the slate dish and the flavours were all very distinctive and moreish.

Then the problems started again..

The waiter then came out with a printed email which said the competition winner was only allowed to select one main and one desert each…(there was only me and my wife) I pointed out that the voucher said one of each dish from the tasting menu but he didnt agree.
So to keep the piece I ordered the Saltimbocca Maiale which had the best mash I've ever had, the green beens were lovely and crisp and the generous portion of pork was very juicey and flavoursome.
My wife was a bit more adventurous and ordered the Orata al Forno again cooked perfectly but not very easy to eat because of all the small bones..
For dessert we had the Affogato which was something weve never tryed before the texture was lovely it seemed strange pouring coffe on your dessert but it was a perfect match of flavours.
The Bunet piemontese was really creamy and the crushed amoretto bisuits were dreamy.
So overall the food was very good, but I was dissapointed and annoyed that we weren't allowed to sample the other dishes.