28th October, 25582525, LEMESOS (LIMASSOL)
Mon-Sun 8:00-00:00
Food: [rating:3.5] 3.5/5
Service: [rating:3] 3/5
Ambiance: [rating:4] 4/5
Right when there were no Italian restaurants in Limassol two of them have come out of no where. If I just face the fact that none of them will be like dining in Italy I think they are both worthwhile. Like La Forchetta, I think Como can adequately satisfy one’s need for pizza, pasta and authentic Italian food.
I am still not 100% sure of what I think about Como’s location. Although it is centrally situated on the ground floor of the Olympic towers, only a few meters away form the beach and a few minutes away from the Enaerios it is on a very busy street, which I thought was not ideal. Having said that, after actually dinng at Como I realised that the inside space of the restaurant is very quiet, to the extent that you don’t feel that you are on such a busy avenue. Another thing that I noticed only after dining there, is that the décor is not what I thought it would be. I expected it to have a minimalistic modern but a bit kitsch ambiance with all black furniture. In reality though it was everything mentioned above excluding the kitsch and substituting it with “elegant touches of wood”. It wasn’t as big or as dark as I imagined, but rather elegant and refined (without being formal). It didn’t have loud luxurious elements but you could tell that a lot of money and detail was put into its decoration just by taking one step into the restaurant.
The menu is Italian-ish, although most of the dish names are in English. Apart from a few sandwiches and soups there is a long list of Starters, Salads, Fish and Meat dishes as well as pizzas. The menu was long but –unlike a lot of rich menus with nothing substantial- I wanted to eat almost everything. My proud Cypriot friend and I settled with a salad as it was a hot, weekday lunch but would definitely go back for a pizza. My seared tuna and artichoke salad served with radish, anchovies and capers was quite generous in size and very tasty in flavour. It was definitely something different to the usual salads that, either have an overdose of cheap balsamic vinegar or no flavour at all. The tuna was perfectly cooked – rare -while the strong but not over the top taste of vinegar made the salad quite satisfying. My proud Cypriot friend’s (also known as Afrodite’s Kitchen) said her shrimp panzalena salad with roasted peppers, achovies and garlic was also tasty, a bit more on the sweet side. I appreciated the home-made bread served with olive oil and tomato dip. I thought the food options offered were quite “refined” and a fresh addition to the Limassol restaurant scene with dishes like seabass and porcini risotto, a veal chop with pancetta sauce and a pizza Fiorentina with mascarpone, egg, spinach and pancetta.
The prices are a bit elevated but expected from a retaurant with that kind of ambiance, menu and location. Salads and pizzas were 12-15€ while main courses started from 14€ and were up to 26€. The portions are generous so one starter to share with a main course each is more than enough. Overall I thought it ticked the boxes of good food, pleasant and modern ambiance and generally a positive vibe. I heard people complain about the service but we had no problems at all.
