Alan Cookman

visits La Dolce Vita, Stone

STANDING between me and my dinner was a stretch of pavement menacingly overlaid with an inch of solid ice.

It would be misleading the public to suggest that I covered the distance in a single graceful movement, executing a deft inside axel and a sly salchow en route.

Irrespective of the number of times I bunked off college to spend afternoons at the Silver Blades ice rink in Leeds, I have never shown any aptitude for skating.

In fact those afternoons were mainly spent clinging grimly to the perimeter barrier and wondering why I hadn't gone 10 pin bowling instead.

It was Herself's birthday, the big freeze had the nation in its grip, and I'd hauled myself out of my sick bed for the celebration meal.

I'd begun to suffer the combined effects of flu and over-exposure to daytime TV commercials, trapped in a parallel world of sinister gold merchants, levitating Italian tenors and women with mysterious transit problems.

So I was glad to venture out into the frozen night, and grateful for the support of Herself and her Inuit boots.

Situated on the corner of Stafford Street and Crown Street, right across the canal from the lockside Star Inn, La Dolce Vita is one of Stone's more esteemed eating places.

The building has a mellow, rustic look to it, and the interior style leans towards the classical and Renaissance, so we were spared views of sun-drenched Adriatic beaches on this arctic evening.

A poster showing gondolas plying the Grand Canal in Venice would have been unwelcome on a night when you could have driven a steam roller along the adjacent Trent & Mersey.

La Dolce Vita is not cheap (don't be surprised to pay up to £17.95 for a grill or a meat dish), and my sardine starter was a hefty £7.45 for three sardines.

On the quayside at Portimao on the Algarve, we used to get half a dozen for a quid, but these three were major sardines, big, tasty specimens sautéed with onions and herbs, and served with a crisp salad.

The Son and Heir started with the calamari (£5.95), rings of squid perfectly cooked in a light batter, with a garlic and lemon mayonnaise.

Herself was surprised to find her minestrone soup (£3.75) bereft of pasta, and she found the risotto marinara (£11.45) deeply disappointing.

It was a watery affair, with grains of arborio rice floating around when they really should have absorbed the moisture, and generally more akin to soup than a classic risotto.

The Son & Heir enjoyed his pollo piccante (spicy chicken) pizza (£9.95), but he wondered why the Napoli sauce tasted so strongly of curry powder. I told him he was in no position to quibble, a voucher having entitled him to a free main course.

For my part, I must congratulate the chef on the rich and gorgeous Neapolitan sauce which caressed my otherwise rather solid traditional meatballs (£9.95) and tagliatelle.

Over an espresso and the last of the house red, I watched the Son & Heir getting himself on the outside of a vintage tiramisu (£4.95), while his mother fell in love with the Coupe Dolce Vita (£5.25), a dreamy concoction of cream, ice-cream, honey and brandy.

I drifted off into a reverie in which a bald-headed man in a suit said that if I didn't hand over my gold teeth I'd be lowered head first into the refining furnace.

A tenor with a twirly moustache tried to intervene by singing at him, but he was distracted by a woman seeking urgent relief from her transit problems.