Have you been read­ing Solo Date City? This anonym­ous blog­ger is eat­ing her way around Wel­ling­ton alone, writ­ing gor­geously about both the exper­i­ence and the feel­ings that pro­pelled her to that res­taur­ant in the first place. I love to eat brunch or even lunch by myself, but din­ner not so much, so tonight I took inspir­a­tion from her, and took myself out. Now I’m going to steal her tem­plate too. Muhahaha.

Ven­ue: Cosa Nos­tra, Thorndon
Vis­ited: Monday, 6pm
Mood at time of vis­it: Snuffly & full of self pity
Type: Itali­an res­taur­ant
Ambi­ence: Cas­u­al, neight­bour­hood res­taur­anty. Some tables set up for groups, oth­ers for happy two-somes. Music is a mix­ture of opera and what you’d expect in a ste­reo­typ­ic­al Itali­an res­taur­ant.
Cli­entèle: Loc­als, so since it’s Thorndon I’d say pub­lic ser­vants. Mainly Boomers, but there is a chil­dren’s menu avail­able
Busy? Not when I first got there, but it star­ted filling up.
Ser­vice: Cas­u­al, friendly and non-intrus­ive
Price (for one): $51.50
Dif­fi­culty: Easy as, the only chal­lenge was in find­ing pants and leav­ing the house. But do make sure you take your own book, I saw no news­pa­pers or magazines.

pork cutletI had been sick for the past couple of days, a sore throat quickly escal­at­ing to the feel­ing that my brain was try­ing to escape via my nose, and then a cough devel­op­ing. Even though friends had vis­ited, bring­ing me cheese and panadol, I felt like I had­n’t escaped the house in weeks, I’d felt too sick to clean, and I could­n’t face the thought of try­ing to scrape some­thing togeth­er for din­ner. Hav­ing not eaten prop­erly (read: veget­ables) in days, I was crav­ing home-cook­ing, without the hassle of hav­ing to be enter­tain­ing in exchange for my food, so I decided to go and check out my neigh­bour­hood. A quick check of the Cosa Nos­tra web­site menu showed me they had what I was look­ing for – simple meat and three vege type cook­ing. It was on.

I was greeted warmly and when I asked for a table for one, I was shown to one at the front of the res­taur­ant, per­fect for me because I could turn my back on the room and the extra day­light from the win­dows was good for read­ing by (though even without this, it would prob­ably have been bright enough to read in any­way). The wait­ress poin­ted out the spe­cials board to me, and told me what was on it too, leav­ing me for the per­fect amount of time to con­sider my order without feel­ing neg­lected. Actu­ally, I was ser­i­ously impressed by the ser­vice all the time – sit­ting with my back to the room I could­n’t do the look­ing up hope­fully meer­cat type face whenev­er I wanted some­thing else, but I did­n’t need to at all.

I ordered the Mailale alla Mil­anese ($28.90), described as a pork cut­let crumbed and topped with moz­arella, served with saf­fron risotto, roast toma­toes and sea­son­al greens. It was a decent-sized por­tion, but not huge – I prob­ably should have ordered extra veget­ables. This simple dish was exactly what I was in the mood for, like a hug from a plate. Like­wise, the lem­on pan­nacotta had good strong fla­vours, although it was a slightly smal­ler por­tion than I might have expec­ted for $13.50. I got to read my book, drink a glass of rosé and escape my house and my brain for a little while.

While I would­n’t go to Cosa Nos­tra expect­ing any­thing ground­break­ing, I do look for­ward to return­ing there with a group, get­ting the set menu and doing BYO ($7 cork­age).