Toto’s Restaurant & Pizzeria
Restaurant: Toto’s
Address: 1 Fawcett Street
Prices: £9 for main meal and drink
Rating: ***
In what appeared to be a bid to find the cheapest grease-pool presented on a tomato-mozzarella-pepperoni plate, my flatmates have almost every night, without fail, produced a brand new soggy cardboard box containing our ‘dinner’. We’ve even branched beyond fathomable pizza toppings: for the first two weeks I marvelled at seeing such things as a real life doner kebab pizza, a ‘chips’ pizza, and even the occasional ‘Efe’s Special’ (6 types of pizza in one). But freshers week is finished and I am now determined to kick my health back into shape since the novelty of ‘student eating’ has most definitely worn off. Predictably, my housemates were reluctant, so to make for a smooth transition I settled with the upmarket equivalent: an Italian restaurant.
I had walked past Toto’s before, and although the exterior hardly transported me to the heart of Florence, it seemed like a cosy not-so-central, not-so-obvious restaurant. My flatmates were onboard after looking at the website to assure we weren’t wasting precious investment in Efe’s, and rejoicing to find that all pizza or pasta dishes are £3.95 between 5pm-7pm! Life was good: we felt civilized, not too guilty, and would still have enough money to go out afterwards.
The red, white, and green colours of Toto’s quaint little building seemed to float towards us as we approached our rendez-vous. Having hurriedly dashed to the cashpoint and paced through the rain (we were pushing 6:20 – didn’t want to take any chances) we were suddenly halted by the notice board outside, which, from our reaction, passers-by may have taken to brand a death warrant for our lives. It in fact read: “HAPPY HOUR: 5pm-6:30pm. Any pizza or pasta dish is just £5.95”. It was a blow. But casting our mind’s eye back to the empty kitchen, we decided to just bite the bullet and open the door.
First impression: much more authentic than I had expected from outside, with vintage Italian posters, dim lighting, rustic colours and actual Italian waiters. Second impression: a loud Italian woman shouting across the vast space of 10 cm between us to ask if I had reserved a table. To my embarrassment, after admitting that I had not, she looked absolutely appalled, communicated this absurd phenomenon to her colleague in the loudest possible way before they both decided it best to “put them upstairs”.
Unfortunately, well before our food arrived, we were struck by the bad quality of service. Eager to enjoy this night out, I attempted to put it down to Italianisms, but I’m sure it’s not inherently Italian to be blatantly reluctant to take our order before happy hour finishes. Later, when serving the drinks, our waitress carelessly threw the napkins from our glasses onto our plates to get them out of her way. Perhaps I was just taken aback by such brazen behaviour, but we all came to dread her approaching like naughty children afraid of a teacher.
The food’s arrival, however, was a god-send, saving the service from becoming irritating, the schmaltzy music sickening, and the décor too bizarre (our table surrounded by, among other things, an accordion and a bush). Although I was poised ready to criticise, I couldn’t: the generous portions looked delicious and the bottle of wine was cleaned up well before the end of the meal. I got a spaghetti bolognese, which was great, but the thing to order there is definitely the pizza. They are in another league, and I enviously watched as my friend smugly finished off a huge stuffed calzone pizza.
Overall it’s great for a group wanting a change of scene, but they are going to have to lose the cheesy Italian ballad music, tone down the over the top interior, and smile a bit more.
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