La Dolce Vita
22nd March 2009
Shrewsbury has a number of good Italian restaurants, including the well respected La Dolce Vita. We spoke to owner Luigi about how he came to be running an Italian restaurant here in Shrewsbury and about his passions for Italian food and good ingredients...
Shrewsbury
01743 249126
ladolcevitashrewsbury.co.uk
How long has your restaurant been in Shrewsbury? What made you
decide to open your business here?
We have been open in Shrewsbury for 10 years, Shrewsbury is such a lovely town, and we felt that it needed an Italian restaurant that is different to the rest, Italians do not eat Spaghetti bolognese, or pizza every day, they eat lots of meat and fish the same as we do!
Do you have a connection with Italy? Is your food typical of a
single region or do you have dishes from all corners?
Luigi is from Naples in the south of Italy, but we lived in Rimini for 14 years, our dishes are from all over Italy, but what makes us different is that we cook and serve all our food as it would be cooked and served it Italy.
How would you describe La Dolce Vita? What is the atmosphere and
style of food?
La Dolce Vita is a small family run restaurant, with a very romantic and intimate atmosphere, the style of food served here is very modern Italian.
Would you say most of your customers are locals, or tourists, or a
mix of both? Do you get a lot of repeat custom?
Most of our customers are locals, and regulars, which is lovely as we have built up a strong loyal clientel, and a lot have become friends now, although we do have lots of tourists, I was pleasently surprised to realise how many tourists come to visit Shrewsbury.
Are many of your ingredients local, or are they difficult to obtain
in Shropshire?
We try to use as much local ingredients as possible, meats, vegetables etc, but all our specialised products are imported from Italy, we only use top quality ingredients in all our dishes.
Can you tell us a bit about your Gourmet Italian evenings?
Our Gourmet evenings are a very special dining experience, we hold them 4 or 5 times during the year, and it is when our head chef and son Gennaro, (who is an international and olympic medal award winner), creates his own menus, and the only word to describe the dishes is amazing, it is Italian fine dining at its best.
One question we always ask, if you had to recommend a single dish
from your menu, what would it be?
If I had to reccomed one dish from our menu, Wow what a question!!, it would probably be fillet of Sea Bass, on a red pepper risotto, but a very close second would be spaghetti con frutti di mare. But then I love fish.
Thanks for talking to us Luigi. If the reviews people have started posting on eatShrewsbury are anything to go by, I am sure we won't be the only ones coming along for a meal in the near future.
More Interviews
Each month we speak to some of our local producers and food retailers.
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Setonaikai
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