Review
Da Vinci’s restaurant in Leixlip is a bit of an institution; it’s the place where everyone goes for the family gathering, night out with friends, or just a casual bite. The atmosphere is lively and busy, the service is friendly but professional and the food is very good indeed.
Sabrina and Pietro Macari have built a thriving business based on personal service and listening to the customer. They now cater for their customers by having gluten free pizza and pasta, by doing local delivery of their home cooked food, and generally by making sure that there is a big welcome inside the door. A lot of other restaurants could learn from these two; putting the customer front and centre works.
On a Saturday night the restaurant is packed, with a couple of bigger groups, and friends in for a meal. The room is large, and is divided into separate spaces, so even if there are big groups, it’s possible to find a quieter corner. The menu is Italian and Mediterranean with some classic Italian dishes, and some that are contemporary fusion with a twist.
The pasta is home made, as are the pizza bases, and the prices are reasonable, and offer good value for money. The menu is long, and rather than go through the list, we’ll just give you a flavour of what we ate on the night.
There was a starter special of Cajun chicken balls, blended with mascarpone cheese, and golden fried in breadcrumbs. A chive and cream sauce was a delicious dip, and this quite quirky dish was a big success.
The better, prettier half had the risotto special. This was a well made risotto, the rice was cooked just right and the wild mushroom, chicken and bacon combination packed great flavour. The portion was extremely generous, and she didn’t quite finish, but if we need to worry about having too much of a good thing, then that’s a luxury problem.
The menu listed another risotto, a seafood dish with mussels, prawns and clams, in a wine sauce with cherry tomatoes. I fancied pasta, so having it as a spaghetti marinara wasn’t a problem. The home made pasta was delicious, and again the dish was generous, with an embarrassment of seafood packing the plate.
Da Vinci’s have a range of smaller desserts; effectively classics in a glass, and we had and shared a tiramisu and a little fruit sundae. I thought these were great; just enough sweetness at the end of a meal, but without having to find too much room in the special dessert tummy.
We finished with coffee and chatted until late; we may have been the last to leave, and did so happy after having had a good meal in the company of some very nice hosts.
