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).