Il Laghetto

Another Friday evening means more pre-​salsa food and my friend and I decided to try Il Laghetto, an Italian on the site of the old C’est La Vie French restaurant. The waitress told us that Il Laghetto had been there for 3 years and judging from the warm greetings to some of the diners, they’ve built up a regular client base.
The restaurant has some quaint cooking utensils decorating the fireplace and there are specials posted on a chalkboard.
The food on the menu was typical Italian except for a lack of pizzas. It was therefore rather surprising and even amusing to find scallops offered with a lemongrass, ginger and chilli sauce in the main courses! Maybe they should have named it Scallops Marco Polo!
We shared a starter of crab tortellini, which was on the specials. The crab flavour came through nicely and wasn’t drowned out by the homemade tomato sauce. Pasta was nice and thin. I was also impressed that the restaurant actually served our split starter on separate plates for us.
Unfortunately, the main courses weren’t as successful. My special of duck in fruits of the forest sauce was quite substantially overcooked resulting in the duck becoming tough. The rice that accompanied my friend’s scallops was under-​seasoned. The vegetables were also looking sorry for themselves.
After our main course plates were cleared, we waited for dessert/​coffee menus for 20 minutes but they never arrived so we didn’t have anything else as we had to go to salsa. There were 2 amaretti biscuits which arrived with the bill and we were offered a drink on the house at the end.
The best Italian kitchen in Ewell is still at Café Amici across the road.