Housed within the Cardigan Fields Leisure Park, just off Kirkstall Road, Bella Italia is the perfect place to put your feet up after a busy day or to grab a quick bite to eat before a night out The restaurant is also close to popular attractions like the Vue Cinema and the Hollywood Bowl bowling alley.

Bella Italia is open for breakfast and offers choices such as fried or scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage, mushroom, tomato and sautéed potatoes, and toasted ciabatta filled with bacon, fried egg and tomato. Menu Frisso, available during midday, is a selection of appealing dishes such as crisp gem lettuce in a Caesar dressing, with lightly toasted ciabatta croutons and Parmesan shavings, and crispy pancetta, torn field mushrooms and penne ricce pasta in a creamy white wine sauce, with Parmesan shavings.

It is always worth remembering that eating Italian is a great opportunity to work away through something rather more liberating than the conventional 3 course English meal. Little and often seems to be the motto but move on to the antipasti and it's immediately obvious this is no easy task, confronted with well over a dozen dishes, not one of which you really have the heart to turn down. The selezione classica assembles a few of the favourite starters; oven baked lemon and rosemary chicken wings, spiced meatballs, calamari, mini garlic butter-filled calzoni and lightly battered courgettes served with flamed pepper and lemon herb dips.

A speck e rucola pizza, added to a traditional margherita brings together two traditions with Italian speck ham providing the second, but it is within the pasta and risotto dishes that you can adapt almost any main ingredient, as well enjoy some of Italy's most traditional treats. Who can deny a well-formed spaghetti Bolognese or penne Marco Polo? And not for nothing is a nicely prepared spaghetti carbonara the preferred dish of many.

From a selection of five choices amongst the secondi many will head unerringly for controfiletto ai ferri, an 8oz rump steak char-grilled to preference and served with garlic butter, roast field mushrooms and rocket, or the fritto misto, lightly battered prawns, cod fillet, calamari and courgette with fries and a herb lemon and caper dip.

Could anything be more appropriate than The Godfather, for 1 or 2 naturally, with nutty chocolate fudge brownies, vanilla and honeycomb ice cream with chocolate sauce, fresh cream and wafer curls, and rest assured the coffee will do justice to the meal.

With a wine list that makes few concessions to other countries - and why should it - good Italian food can receive an equally national baptism by wine. For further enlightenment, news about their on-line shop and special deals, a click on their lively Website will reveal all.

More information can be found on their Website.