Botti di Mamma on Broad Street owned by Edin Gondzic is the most recent reimagination of the space formerly occupied by Edins Deli Cafe and Edins Continental Cafe. The last time I was eating here was in July last year when they had knocked the Deli Cafe through into Lee Rosies Tea room to expand the Continental Cafe. I had some great dishes there on their Menu del Dia (read more here)

Menu Items at Botti di Mamma

Last September they rebranded softly as Osteria Botti di Mamma, taking many of the items that they had tested out on that Menu del Dia and adding in some more hearty plates such as a Wood Fired Whole Seabream, a Seabass, and a Half Roasted Chicken. The menu is still very much in the style of ‘Italian tapas’ though, essentially lots of small plates.

I was checking out the place on a Sunday lunchtime so was trying to put together some sort of meal from the menu for the moment. I had seen “Lamb Shoulder, Roast Potatoes, Pesto” on the board so I was starting with that, then I added in a side dish of asparagus after recommendation from the waiter while I was perusing the options.

Lamb Shoulder, Roast Potatoes, Pesto

The Lamb Shoulder was a decent size for a small plate dish, a hand sized slice of Lamb shoulder on top of a small stack of roasted potatoes. A small roasted vine tomato was perched on the top of the lamb amongst a drizzle of pesto.

The meat cooked in their wood fired oven was cooked to be well done and was very tender. I thought that this dish was really well presented and it was very photogenic, I was hoping that it would eat as well as it looked. It was a nice mix of flavours, the lamb with the pesto and the tomato made for a good forkful of food, and the soft fluffy filling from the roasts was good too.

If I am honest I would have like a bit more of a jus or a gravy to go with the meat, you did get some sweet juice from the tomato and a bit of moisture from the pesto which helped, but maybe a bit more of both would have made it even better?

You probably need to be a bit cleverer with your other small plate choices to get a side dish or matching small plate that has a bit more liquid in it to go alongside.

The whole point of the ‘Italian tapas’ is to mix and match and I suppose I was trying to shoehorn a couple of plates to make up a sunday lunch so I wasn’t really playing properly.

Asparagus

The side of asparagus that I ordered to go with the lamb was pretty substantial and would have been a great side to share. I usually only have a couple of spears at home when and if I cook some for the table, so getting the 7 or 8 pieces here was a lot to work my way through. It did actually go very well with the lamb and so I was pretty glad that the waiter had suggested this as a choice.

I liked that there was cheese on top as well, that added a little bit of saltiness, and a bit of richness to the dish. Looking back I think I should have got one more dish to go with it all, maybe something more saucey.

Big Glass of Beer

I do like the food that Edin Gondzic offers us at all of his local restaurants, and I like that they don’t make a song and dance about it and just get on with feeding us all at quite reasonable prices and in very relaxed and comfortable spaces. I know that I will keep on coming back anyway and it seems to be that everyone else is too

Next time I pop in I might have to go back to the usual idea of just getting loads of little plates of all the stuff I like eating, instead of trying to make a coherent meal 🙂

This meal was good value I thought, with a big glass of draft beer it came to just over £17. I could have ordered more 😜

I always have liked eating here whether it be Edins Deli Cafe , Edins Continental Cafe, and now Botti di Mamma. It was eating here and then writing about it that gave me my first published article back in 2013, that was in Olive Magazine and friends quite gleefully tell me that a copy of that article is in the toilets of one of the Edin Restaurants.

Botti di Mamma is located at 15 Broad Street, on the opposite side of the Street to the Broadway Cinema and Brew Dog

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