For our 9th wedding anniversary, my wife and I headed to Tarantino's
Italian restaurant in Hornchurch, after being recommended it by a
work colleague.
Well, thumbs up to her, for this place was everything I'd been told it
would be. Firstly, the service was really friendly. I think this is
partly due to the place being local, with another branch in Brentwood.
Very much a family affair then, and all the better for it. It avoids
any sense of corporate blandness you sometimes find in Italian
restaurants, though nearby Zizzi doesn't do too badly in this respect
despite it being part of the ASK group. Tarantino's has a regular menu
plus a couple of weekly changing specials.
I was told that the portions would be large, and that the quality
would be high. Both assertions were not wrong. I'm a big lad.
For my starter, I ordered baby back ribs with honey barbecue sauce,
and that's exactly what I got - the taste was both tangy and sweet - ,
with the ribs falling off the bone. The portion on the platter was
main meal sized. My Dearly Beloved had meatballs which were the best
I've tasted, made of a combination of beef and veal, very finely
minced and evidentially made using quality meat. Again, a larger than
average portion. So far so good.
Next we both had a tagliatele dish. Mine was served with creamy tomato
and garlic sauce, with strips of scotch steak. The beef tasted like it
was not from the cheapest cut - I guess it came from sirloin, and was
very tasty and perfectly cooked, so chewy enough without arguing with
the teeth. This was, perhaps, the best pasta dish I've ever eaten. The
sauce was delicious and robust, matching the steak strips perfectly,
and the pasta firm and not claggy in the slightest. The Wife also gave
her pasta dish eight out of ten, though I never tasted any of hers as
it contained broccoli. I'd rather die before eating this.
Mrs Wife was full up after this extravaganza of flavour and so went
straight to coffee. I ploughed on with strawberry cheesecake, which I
would rate highly, though it didn't have the wow factor of the pasta.
Big portion though, so gets 7 out of 10.
Overall, I'm going to give this place a highly recommended rating. I
do love Italian and it is quite easy to get a pasta dish right. But
it is very difficult to make a pasta meal exceptionally well, and
that's just what they've done here. Its won two awards, one being the
"Best Regional Italian Restaurant" award. With good reason.
Despite Essex's reputation of being a food desert, Hornchurch is an
area of well-kept secrets, with Bonaparte being better than most
French restaurants in London I've tried. Tarantino's has barged its
way into my "restaurants I now love" list. Out on a limb in the RM
postcode area, all these delights are skipped by the London critics
who tend to stick around the West End, Mayfair and Kensington, plus a
few of what I'd imagine can only be the local haunts of particular
journalists. Great if you live or work there. However, for us in the
far eastern suburbs, Hornchurch is an unsung oasis.
Ssssshh. We'll keep it to ourselves before all those peasants further
west discover it.
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