Review: Ristorante Colosseus, Kildare town
Ristorante Colosseus, Kildare town afforded us some very welcome hearty Italian food when we were forced back out of Kildare Village Outlet by the extraordinary pre-Christmas car park queues. By arriving at 16:30 we were well within the Early Bird zone, which runs up to 7pm. Three courses for €12.95 seemed extremely good value, and to be fair, the portions and taste were not skimped on as is usual for overly-cheap offerings. I see from previous reviews on Trip Advisor that the prices were a little high, so it’s great to see restaurants step up to the plate, so to speak, and slash their prices.
Mr Gastronimics.ie opted for – surprise surprise – the chicken wings, which were nicely cooked and flavoured, but the chilli dip which accompanied it was altogether too tangy and sugary – it tastes like the rather cheap bottled version lurking at the back of my fridge for some time. I had a very interesting starter, which was mushrooms on ciabatta bread, with a creamy goat’s cheese sauce layered on top. It was fantastic. I often incorporate goat’s cheese into sauces at home, but had yet to come across it in a restaurant in Ireland. It was rich, but not overly so, cheesy, but certainly not too heavily so. Truly a very tasty starter, one of the best I’ve tasted in an Italian restaurant this year(granted it’s, oh February, but you know what I mean!).
For the main course, the OH went for what I call the ‘man-option’, i.e., a pizza with every imaginable meat and vegetable crammed on top. And it did not disappoint, a very flavoursome thin-based pizza, which literally groaned under the weight of the toppings. I opted for Italian sausage in tomato sauce, accompanied by a side of pasta. The sauce was excellently flavoured, a real treat to the tongue, but the sausage unfortunately was quite fatty indeed, leading me to pull whole fingernail sized pieces out of the sausage before taking a bite. My own fault really, to be fair, as any Italian sausage I’ve ever tasted has been pretty much like this. Learn, girl, learn.
A bottle of very good Pinot Grigio accompanied the meal, and this and our water was topped up regularly, a little touch I very much appreciate. In lieu of dessert we asked for coffees, which was thankfully not a problem – there is nothing worse than a waiter / waitress refusing point blank to accommodate any deviation from a set menu, not matter how much money it would actually save the house. We quite literally waddled out of the restaurant some hour later, very sated, and only relieved of €52 in total for a three course meal and bottle of vino. Not bad going, for two minutes’ drive away from the mêlée that is Christmas Kildare Village Outlet. Ristorante Colosseus, Kildare – 4/5