Ciao Roma

In a city not exactly starved of Italian eateries, it takes something really special for a restaurant to stand out. There is no question that Ciao Roma has exactly that something. While the prodigious food menu bursts with an array of traditional pasta, anti-pasti, al forno and salad dishes to choose from, the modern twist on a pizza carne, the Gustaso, proudly offers chips and Frankfurters as toppings alongside the more pedestrian tomato passata and mozzarella.
If the main course hasn't sated your appetite for eccentricity, the desserts might prove more exciting: The Skinny was deeply impressed by the panna-cotta and caramel ice cream, for example. But if you're still yawning with blasé, opt to eat in Ciao Roma's Treasure Island themed banquetting suite. Hispaniola, formerly The Rutherford Bar, is an homage to Robert Louis Stevenson (once an allegedly frequent patron) complete with skeletal pirates, wall-mounted cutlasses and a decomposing corpse suspended in a cage over of the tables.
A tad too authentic? Perhaps.
Unnerving? Definitely.
Your typical, ten-a-penny Italian restaurant? Absolutely not.