Puccini

Nice little Italian /​tapas place in the Roath area of Cardiff. We were the only customers on a Wednesday lunchtime, but the food was nice and we took advantage of a good lunchtime deal.
Taste Card deal available on evenings only.

Excellent! Wide choice of food on menu, from tapas to pizza. Fantastic décor, reasonable prices especially with vouchers which are available on the usual sites. Would visit again!

Warm welcome to this cosy and homely mediterranean style restaurant. The unremarkable exterior is misleading. I won’t add to the excellent descriptions made by previous reviewers.
It was sorely tempting, viewing the long list of enticing tapas (also available as mains) but on this first visit we were eating as an extended family party, on a budget so no starters, wine or afters, unfortunately.
There were plenty of vegetarian and non-​veggie mains, but we all chose pizzas, which were beautifully fresh, large and generously covered with toppings. Salad was delightfully served with a subtle touch of herb flavoured dressing.
A small misunderstanding over one order was soon rectified, without fuss.
Looking forward to coming back for the rest of the menu!

Went here using a groupon voucher — will be returning. Food was freshly made using good quality ingredients. House wine was good too. Very, very nice.

went there last night, had the tapas dishes, really nice, good service. will go again

Sat incongruously between a vacant property and an abandoned garage halfway down Albany Road, Puccini’s pleasant interior is in stark contrast with its unsightly neighbours. It may go some way toward explaining why more often than not Puccini isn’t exactly bustling (even sometimes on prime weekend evenings). That’s through no fault of the food, taking decent flair to Mediterranean specialities of tapas and pizza at reasonable prices. An ill-​advised whitebait order — you try eating whitebait without feeling like all their little eyes are watching you! — ended with the waitress making a special trip back to the table to ask what was wrong with the dish. But though the tone felt a little accusatory, you have to give kudos to any restaurant keen to up their game via immediate customer feedback. The restaurant is so quiet on occasion though that the atmosphere is lacking to the point of awkwardness, which could prove a bit of a vicious cycle in the long term.

I’m sorry, but I refuse to go back to La Tasca. You can’t microwave a bag of frozen potatoes and call it Spanish tapas. Even if I receive 50% off my total bill with one of those movie ticket vouchers, I still won’t go.
Which is why I’ve come to appreciate the tasty dishes at Puccini — yes, the décor is a bit, um, over the top, but for me, that’s all part of its charm. I know they offer other dishes besides tapas here, but that’s all I’ve ever had and it’s all I go back for. Your best bet is to visit with four or more people and just order every tapas dish on the menu, guaranteeing a lively and engaging dining experience.
I’m a prickly hummus lover — the ultra-​creamy varieties sold in grocery stores make my stomach turn, but the Puccini recipe is thicker and a bit grittier, like it’s just been mixed in the back and brought out to your table.
And it has — everything here is home made and you can tell by the way it tastes. I’m going again on Friday for a mate’s leaving dinner, and I’m already foaming at the mouth thinking about their hummus and tabouleh. Sad, I know, but it’s true.

This Mediterranean tapas lounge and pizzeria is only small, with slightly cliched, old-​fashioned décor — including a rather ghastly but well-​intended mural depicting an Italian coastal scene.
If you can get beyond the gammy décor, the food is excellent value. The menu offers plenty of choice, the pizzas in particular are very tasty, and it’s all made on the premises. They have some lunchtime deals with pizza or pasta dishes for about £5, which for the quality you get is very good. The calzone folded pizza with halloumi cheese and spinach is delicious. Drinks are less of a bargain, so I guess that’s where they make up some of their profits.

Puccini is an old-​school style restaurant that is not trying to be new-​fangled and faddy, and for this I love it! The rather curious and somewhat questionable look of the place has been created with longevity in mind. I can oly assume that the owners have probably paid handsomely for the rather naff mural, of what looks like it could be the Amalfi Coast, with a curiously positioned arch in the foreground, (the kind you train creepers and roses on, but I can’t recall what they are called!!!). This would perhaps be less of a faux pas if it were painted on one of the garden walls, but instead, this lurid, ill-​conceived, badly rendered piece of art covers the full extent of one of the interior walls. Perfect! I guess that they decided that the mural might up-​stage the sizeable statuette of David that they have in the garden?! Love it, love it, love it!
This is not to say that I don’t appreciate high design, I do! But I would hate for everywhere to look the same. Besides which, corporate homogenisation of interior design is usually little better than appalling. Sports pubs, family pubs with their awful carveries on Sundays, fast food chains and supermarket cafes all make my skin creep! Give me Puccini any day of the week! Their mural may not have been painted with the skill of the Sistine Chapel, but I bet they thought long and hard about it, and chose a subject dear to their hearts. Yes, I guess it would be true to say I have disparaged it somewhat, but that’s simply because it is not to my taste. I don’t profess to be an arbiter of the urbane, I simply offer my opinion for what it’s worth. And, I like things that are naff in the way I perceive the art to be naff at Puccini’s.
Anyway, the food! All can be forgiven for the food. Reasonably priced and homemade, with a good varied menu, and attempting to cater to everybody’s tastes, Puccini’s is a decent little eatery in it’s class. But I go there just to ogle the mural!

This Mediterranean restaurant is a little jewel in Cardiff.
It has a fairly wide menu and most people will have no difficulty in finding something that they like. The Lebanese pizza has already been recommended and I would echo that.
Service is very helpful and pleasant.

Another restaurant that I’d go to if I was passing but wouldn’t go out of my way to get to.
Its a pretty small venue that feels a little bit cramped though it suits the style of food they sell. Its Mediterranean tapas or pizza’s, so good food to share. I’ve had lovely calzone’s from Puccini and its a good lunch spot for me really as you can relax on a sofa and enjoy a light bite.
The service is fine and its quite cheap too, it just doesn’t have much of a wow factor.

This is a pretty average restaurant/​coffeeshop but the reason why it deserves 4 stars is because everything in it is made by the same person, you can tell that the pizzas were just done and are original to the place. This restaurant is a cross between an Italian and a Lebanese, but it doesn’t lose identity because of that it actually gains some uniqueness.
I order a Lebanese pizza, which in fact is a Calzone with Halloumi cheese and Spinach. It came with a sald by the side and it really tasted good! And was actually quite cheap (lunchtime deal, pizza/​pasta £5), the only trick is that they over charge on the drinks, £1.80 for a Pineapple juice seemed a bit expensive for me, but still I got well fed there!
The decoration is pretty Italian cliché but still quite pleasant, it feels larger from the inside than when you walk in. Which is always good. They have some sofas next to the dining tables, for me that is very comfy and that was what this restaurant felt to me. The owner/​waiter is friendly and the food is also pretty nice. It was a discovery which I will certainly repeat!
P. S.: If you are veggie like me. pay attention to the plates marked with a V, cause there is a V Arriabata pasta and it has chicken on it.