Firenze

At first sight Firenze is not the sort of place you might expect to find in a Leicestershire village, albeit quite a big village. Not that there's anything wrong with Kibworth Beauchamp or Firenze, indeed the whole point of this review is to let you know how much things are right, particularly with Firenze. Owned by Sarah and Lino Poli - with a kitchen run by Stuart Batey, Max Faulkner, and Lino Poli - and described by The Financial Times as "One of the finest Italian restaurants in England, with an immaculate, ever-changing 'all Italian' wine list with food that reminds one of how food should really taste", it soon becomes clear that this is no idle comment.

So, credentials established, let's take a look at what the substance is. The main menu is the one to watch and antipasti get away to a strong start with both light and heavier dishes that set out the credibility of this pleasing restaurant. The carpaccio of beef, served with mushrooms, parmesan shavings and lemon dressing is so good as to be almost a signature dish. Home-cured, warm smoked trout with potato and watercress salad has a firm following, but it is the simple combination of asparagus and artichoke into a salad with egg the really does it for me.

One of the most joyous parts of eating Italian is the ability to abandon the traditional English three course meal and expand into five by adding the pasta and fish. Naturally repeated exploitation of this thinly veiled manoeuvre leads to other forms of expansion that cannot be so discreetly covered. Buon appetito!

The pasta dishes number around five at any one time and can include orecchiette with tiger prawns, broccoli and chilli, or tagliatelle with lamb ragout. Italian cuisine's love affair with broccoli is about the only hole that can be picked in their otherwise impeccable taste, but that is a personal view. From the five or so pasta dishes we move seamlessly to the fish course, which offers whatever is best given the season, the weather and EU bureaucracy. With an Italian coastline of some 7,600km it would be strange indeed if there was no tradition to match on the menu and the fish 'specials' are keenly anticipated by regulars at Firenze.

Italian cooking is kind to all meats, but it always seem to excel when it comes to beef dishes, and the fillet of beef with spring vegetables and olive oil sabayon at Firenze is certainly no exception. Loin of lamb, breast of chicken, pork and veal belly, the lamb baked in puff pastry with aubergine, all have their own particular charms.

Enthusiasm for the chase i.e. the meal, seems to mount in Italian restaurants as the climax approaches, with the dolci, or puddings, offering a range of glorious indulgences of the sort that Mama makes. May I commend two to you from the menu, the crème fritta, deep fried chocolate and hazelnut custard with praline and banana, or the authentic Italian cheese with chestnut honey and 'mustard' fruits, supported by Firenze's own bread?

And finally it is said that no Italian meal is truly complete until a bottle of dessert wine has been passed round the table, and of course Italian coffee, and the machines that make it, are legendary. A superb wine list of well over 100 choices, all from Italy, includes wonderful blends, sparklers and twenty by the glass.

A set evening menu and lunch menu are also available. All menus are subject to seasonal and market variations, and whim is also not unknown. A click on their Website will give you an update and other details to ensure that you have the best possible time at Firenze.