Bacco Italian Restaurant, Richmond, London

This appears to be Richmond's secret that perhaps only locals know of - a pretty good Italian restaurant right next door to the Carluccio's chain restaurant. Fancy that! Bacco Italian is located opposite the train station and just a hop skip and a jump down the road you'll find the unassuming Italian Kitchen. Like so many of the established restaurants in Richmond, this is another traditional styled dining eatery, although some dishes do have a modern touch. Inside the restaurant the dining room is split in two separate left and right areas, we opted to the right. It is intimate dining, meaning that you are close together and conversation is stifled by this but later on the atmosphere lifts as more people arrived and it turns into a fabulously buzzing restaurant.

Octopus Carpaccio

Our young waitress was pleasant, the service was good and attentive all round, I mentioned to chic geek about it being a little chilly inside (we were close to the door) and they discretely sparked up a heater close by. They look to have a good selection of seafood dishes so on that note I started with the octopus (pictured above). Incidentally, their pasta dishes available as a starter as well, so my hungry counter part had the prawn tagliatelle for a starter. My octopus, which I can only describe as octopus arms thinly sliced, was served as a carpaccio. It had saffron and cauliflower and a slight lemony oil over the soft pieces of octopus. The pasta with the tagliatelle was freshly made, delicious, a complete pasta dish with crispy bacon and prawns. I must mention the Peppoli chianti, I would recommend you have with this with your pasta centric meal, the mark-up for this was quite reasonable - 30 odd quid for a wine that retails for around 17 quid and its quite a decent drop of vino.

Tagliatelle starter

Our mains consisted of a sausage and smoke ricotta cheese ravioli with a burnt butter and sage sauce, and the Guinea fowl with a mash, bacon, sultanas and cabbage. I felt some of the pasta dishes were a little heavy on the salt - the sausage meat in my ravioli was a touch salty but I was very happy with the dish overall. It had a lovely slight aniseed flavour, very comforting dish with the sage butter sauce. The Guinea fowl was tender and moist, you know what? It's very much the same flavour as chicken if I'm honest. Two very nice dishes, I suggest that one will need side dishes with this meal, I found my pasta mains a tad on the an economical side (however, I was starving), but say if you just want a small meal, then it is perfect. Service has been consistent and good through out.

Ravioli - sauage, cheese, sage butter sauce

Guinea Fowl

Our desserts were excellent, the stand out being the Fig Tart picture below. It was obvious that it had been made that day, I am hoping in house. The tiramisu was very good also. I suspect Bacco will probably be my favourite Italian restaurant in both Richmond and Twickenham, there are a few more visits to be had to ensure consistency, but these guys have been here a while and I suspect my future visits will be just as enjoyable. Well done to them!