(Visited in September 2010)
I asked an Italian guy who lives in Athens for many years where I can find a good pizza and he recommended me Vincenzo. Why should not I give it a try?
Vincenzo is situated in a part of central Glyfada where many restaurants/cafeterias are concentrated.
It was very busy when we visited on a Suyday afternoon.
Although there are many tables, if you want a nice table, you'd better book. Unfortunately for non-smokers, the best tables were in the smoking area. As I did not want tabacco smoke, we remained indoor space.
The menu is consists mainly in pizzas and pastas, while meat/fish dishes are in limited variety. For this reason, Vincenzo falls very nicely in the category of pizzeria.
We ordered a pizza and a pasta and soon afterwards we were given this bread basket. Even if you are about to eat a mass of starch, there seems to be no choice but to be served also with bread (thus to pay for it).
I wrote 'focaccia', but they are not exactly 'focaccia'. It was something between focaccia and pancake.
There were two different kinds in the basket and one was plain, while this one contained cheese, bacon (or ham; don't remember exactly) and mushroom.
Most of the pizzas are priced between roughly €8 and €10.
This is parmiggiano, prosciutto crudo and rucola (€9.90). The dough is rather high and soft; I won't call it crispy. I liked the pizza base and basic cheese, but generous amount of parmiggiano and ham made the pizza too salty.
The most of the pasta dishes are ranged between €9 and €12.60.
I ordered spaghetti allo scoglio - seafood spaghetti - (€12.60) and it came in a gigantic portion. The shell fish are all fresh and very tasty. The prawns were over-cooked, but if they were there to make the sauce, it was OK. I enjoyed most of the spaghetti until reaching the bottom of the dish where the sauce was concentrated; it was too salty and nearing to inedible.
I looked around my table to see if the portion size of pasta dishes was always so generous and so far as I saw, it wasn't; only the seafood pasta varieties seemed to be enormous.
At the end of the meal, we were offered liqeur to choose from between limoncello and fragolino (fraulino was the word the waitress used) and we got one each.
With a bottle of water and a bottle of coca cola, our final bill came to € 29.40, which is reasonable for Italian restaurants in Greece.
I think that Peccati di Gola - another Italian place where I've eaten in Glyfada - offers better quality food for higher price, while Vincenzo serves unpretentious food for affordable prices; we should be glad to be given a choice and variety.
VINCENZO
Yiannitsopoulou 1, Glyfada
Tel. 210-8941 425
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