Review: Di Bella, Athlone

I went home to visit my family in Athlone this weekend, so we decided to go out for dinner on Saturday night to celebrate my parent’s wedding anniversary.

I grew up in Athlone and my family still live there; without being accused of bias I think I can honestly say that Athlone is generously supplied with good restaurants.  If you’re looking for Thai food there’s Kin Khao, definitely one of the best Thai restaurants in the country.  There’s a number of good Italian restaurants, including Pavarottis, Di Bella, and Pizza Mama. You’ll also find the usual selection of Chinese takeaways and restaurants – one of my favourites is Ken’s in the town centre. For fancier dining there’s Le Chateau or the Olive Grove, or even the Left Bank Bistro.

This evening my mum chose an of the Italian restaurants near the river called Di Bella that is consistently good, and did not disappoint this visit.

Di Bella has a pleasant atmosphere – not too fancy, well laid out and nicely lit (bright enough to see the menu but not too bright; I hate places with spot lights – you know the kind that end up shining in your eyes no matter where you’re sitting.  Anyway, that’s a whole other rant).  The staff are quite friendly and not overbearing, and the food is lovely.  I don’t think it will ever be accused of being haute Italian cuisine but they do standard pasta and pizza dishes, plus steaks and some chicken mains and they do them well.

The pasta dishes were all between €10-12 and the pizza about the same.  Not being the most adventurous of families my parents and I all had penne pasta dishes; my younger brother branched out with a pepperoni pizza.  I had the Penne Amatriciano – a tomato based sauce with bacon and a hint of chilli.  Not being a big chilli fan I was taking a bit of a risk; thankfully it worked out.  For chilli lovers it would probably be a bit too bland but for me it was perfect – literally a hint of chilli.  We tried to take photos from a variety of
angles and with a each of our mobiles but they didn’t really work out. I must have been sitting in the dark corner (that happens when waiting staff see me come in – they seem to intuitively know that I
look better in the dark.  Sadly my food does not).

Anyway, the photographing of the food  went on for a while much to the chagrin of my brother who suffered the embarrassment that only 16 year old boys can feel; muttering under his breathe in exasperation, ‘Oh my god you people are so stupid.  I am NEVER going out to dinner with you again.’  Naturally we continued taking our pictures longer than necessary just to see how mortified he could get.

My mum had penne with mushroom and spinach in a creamy sauce – see attached pictures of full plate of food and empty plate of no-food for the review of this dish.  Let’s just say she was a happy customer.  My
dad, the most adventurous of us all, ALWAYS orders the same dish – penne vodka.  Imagine his dismay when he browsed the menu and discovered it absent!  Thankfully the chef kindly obliged and made him his favourite dish regardless.  (Pictures again attached.)  Clearly, since my dad doesn’t vary his orders he can’t be trusted to be impartial in his opinion but I did try some of his dinner and I can agree that it was most tasty.

We finished with banoffi pie and the selection of ice cream for dessert, they were quickly inhaled.

I’ve been to Di Bella many times over the years and always enjoy the experience.  If you’re looking for straight forward Italian food you’ll find all the standard dishes – bruschetta, carbonara, lasagna, pizzas, steaks – plus a good selection of desserts – cheesecake (though they didn’t have that this evening), banoffi pie, ice cream, tiramisu, creme brulee etc – and a small but decent wine list.  We went for the house red which was €17.  I’m not a wine connoiseur so you’ll just have to accept my opinion that it was a light red wine that went down well…

Overall we had four main courses, two desserts, one soft drink and a bottle of wine and the bill came to €74.45 – not too bad for two hours in a restaurant and a good meal for four people.