Strada, Princesshay – (3.5)

This is really the first proper restaurant that I have reviewed in Exeter that I have gone in with some really high expectations. However, as is normally the case, I was sorely disappointed.
I really wanted to write something good about Strada. I wanted to say how wonderful the service was, as it wasn’t bad really, and I wanted to say how nice the dining experience was, I wanted to say that the surroundings were nice, as they were, and that that the food was stunning.

So I am going to say half of those things, the service was good and the food was nice.

There I have said it.

The rest of it was, with foresight, to be expected from a chain restaurant that makes its money from cramming people in to small spaces.

I thought, as it was our anniversary it’d be nice to take myself and my wife to Strada in Exeter. I had heard good things about the food and good things about the service too, so my expectations were high. However, when we got there, we found that we were playing elbow fencing with two sets of couples having loud conversations about gastric bypasses and what her aunt said to the chef’s daughter, or something.
I couldn’t hear what my wife was saying as the din was horrific. Strada is a glass building with no soft carpet (that I could see, or at least not enough to absorb the din) so everything resonated and echoed terribly. The waitress who was kind and friendly, but seemed hurried, gave us a menu and we sat down. After attempting to talk to my beloved, we realised that we couldn’t actually hear each other, so I called the waitress and asked to be moved to another table. Off she toddled to the maitre’d who suggested we moved to another table on the same floor. I said, well this isn’t going to help, it’s just as noisey there as it is here…” So off she toddled again.

They offered to put us upstairs where it was quieter.  The reason why they hadn’t put us upstairs in the first place was that there was a party of loud women upstairs. So off we went upstairs, where indeed the loud women were in fact nothing compared to the horrific mind bending din downstairs. We mentioned it was our anniversary too and they gave us two glasses of expensive champagne on the house.

So we waited, and scoured through the menu, a lovely three page affair. Strada, in their drive for authenticity, had committed a cardinal sin in my books. When looking through there was NO V signs. Nothing denoting that there was any vegetarian dishes. So after 10 minutes we still had to analyse every dish description to make sure we were not ordering something meaty. After extensive analysis, the thing that amazed us was the total lack of vegetarian dishes, especially for an Italian restaurant, which normally has a decent amount by definition.

After a comparatively short wait, the food came and I asked the waitress if the parmesan was vegetarian. She said she didn’t know, so I declined, so generally it was pretty bland. I had a spring vegetable risotto which tasted nice, the risotto was well done and the vegetables were really tasty and fresh.

We didn’t bother with dessert and left feeling sorely let down by the experience. In conclusion, good food, really good service (the staff were friendly and I felt they’d bend over backwards to help), but crap building, soul destroying menu and for what you received, not good value.