Food ✪✪✪✪ Service ✪✪✪✪✪
Ambience ✪✪✪✪
Ristorante Fratelli
Bell Villas
Ponteland
Newcastle upon Tyne
NE20 9BE 01661 872195
www.fratelliponteland.co.uk
***BEST FAMILY RESTAURANT 2013***
[RE-REVIEW 2014: A generous portion of mushrooms, with garlic butter, lemon and parsley offered a comforting starter, with home-baked toasted bread, but the star of the menu is their linguine scoglio - a seafood pasta that's rich, spicy, buttery, and almost inexpressibly delicious. With mussels, tiger and king prawns chilli and fresh baby tomatoes, served with perfectly al dente linguine, this is one of the finest red seafood pastas I've tried, in or out of Italy. Prepared by a Spanish chef, apparently - you could certainly taste Mediterranean flair in the cooking.
I ended the meal with a very good board of Italian cheeses - quality aged pecorino shone together with a silky soft spicy version, this could be a meal in itself, to be enjoyed with one of their rare Sardinian or Puglian wines from the secret cabinet. Still thoroughly recommended for families - the Sunday lunch is only £8.95 for adults, and there's a magician to keep the kids amused. The staff are super-friendly, but just a little dozy at the moment (it's hard to get experienced staff out to Ponteland) - they brought me the wrong starter twice. But you can't get cross in such a nice atmosphere.]
A few days ago I went to Sainsbury’s in Ponteland. Not the supermarket, but the Italian upstairs.
I ended the meal with a very good board of Italian cheeses - quality aged pecorino shone together with a silky soft spicy version, this could be a meal in itself, to be enjoyed with one of their rare Sardinian or Puglian wines from the secret cabinet. Still thoroughly recommended for families - the Sunday lunch is only £8.95 for adults, and there's a magician to keep the kids amused. The staff are super-friendly, but just a little dozy at the moment (it's hard to get experienced staff out to Ponteland) - they brought me the wrong starter twice. But you can't get cross in such a nice atmosphere.]
A few days ago I went to Sainsbury’s in Ponteland. Not the supermarket, but the Italian upstairs.
Fratelli is the young trendy sister of Sabatini on Newcastle’s quayside, owned by Fabrizio Saba and his brother-in-law Paul Bernardelli. Unlike Secco, there’s a lift, and once inside, the place is enormous. It’s bright and friendly and has a lively cocktail bar.
The menu is also large. Newcastle United footballers mingle with pensioners enjoying happy hour pizzas. It's great for parties, from children to weddings.
