Italian Restaurant Padrino - Westcliff on Sea, Essex

After long drive from Scotland, we finally arrived in Essex (see my last blog). The wedding was taking place in Leigh-on-Sea so we stayed at a hotel in near-by Westcliff-on-Sea, which is situated on the northern side of the estuary of the River Thames, not far from the open waters of the North Sea to the east.

By the time we arrived here in early evening, the weather was gorgeous. Lovely sunshine with nice breeze. There were lots of flowers with full of vibrant colours everywhere on streets or people's gardens. People were having a nice and relaxing stroll along the seafront. Proper summer weather. There was definitely a lovely holiday feel to it. Why can't we not get a weather like this in Scotland???

Anyway, back to talk about food. I did consult with TripAdvisor earlier to see where we could go for dinner, however by the time we left our hotel for wander, I completely forgot a name of a restaurant so we just went for a walk and see what we could find.

We found three Italian restaurants right next to each other on one street, overlooking the seafront, so we just walked into the one that was situated at the corner of the block. The restaurant is called Padrino (http://www.padrinosouthend.co.uk).

As we did not have to worry about driving for the night, we decided to order a bottle of wine.

For starter, we had Insalata Caprese. Mozzarella cheese was very creamy.

For the main course, I could not decide whether to have a pizza or pasta. We decided to do Jimmy Style and had half pizza and half pasta. We ordered roasted vegetable pizza and, since we are at Padrino Restaurant, why not try their Tagliatelle Padrino, which was with squid, courgette and tomato.  The pizza was very delicious with lots of toppings and tagliatelle was also very tasty with perfectly cooked squid with garlic.

We thoroughly enjoyed our meal and had macchiato to finish our meal.

We ordered from a la carte menu however you can also choose from two course set menu which is £9.95.

The bill arrived. It wasn't expensive at all. We were about to pay and noticed that the restaurant forgot to charge us a bottle of wine. No wonder. We mentioned this to them. They were very apologetic about this and gave us complimentary glasses of limoncello. That was very nice of them.

If it were not for the wedding, we would not probably come to Westcliff on Sea or to this restaurant. The restaurant has a very friendly, warm atmosphere and service was very good. We did really enjoy our dinner and the complimentary limoncello made it even better! 

We did not have any dessert although their tiramisu looked really nice.  I had another idea ....

After Padrino, we walked down to the seafront, passing by houses with lovely flowers.

I saw an ice cream place earlier in the evening when we were driving around looking for our hotel. I wanted to go there to buy an ice cream for dessert and that was what we did.

I can't remember what my husband had but I had Rum & Raisin, which is my favourite.

Rum & Raisin Ice Cream Corn

We had a leisurely stroll back to our hotel, eating lovely ice cream and watching the seafront. Weather was still nice and warm, with lovely breeze. It must be very nice to live down south England where you get a lovely summer weather that you can properly enjoy.

The next day was the wedding, the whole purpose of why were were in Essex.  I hope I could squeeze myself into a dress, and after that back to Scotland.

That's all forks.