One of the things about the restaurant reviews you see in newspapers and magazines is that they are always for places like The Fat Duck which, while I would quite like to give it a go were I to become somewhat rich, are somewhat out of my price range at something like one hundred and thirty quid a head. I can only apologise therefore for being about to review an ordinary restaurant that doesn’t have things dipped in liquid nitrogen, but equally isn’t beyond the budget of most normal people.

I haven’t done a restaurant review for quite a long time (not since I wasn’t exactly impressed with the Eslington Villa, anyway). But I went to a restaurant the other night which I was sufficiently impressed with to think that it was worth sharing with you.

This was the Italian restaurant Sonny’s in Whickham. They don’t appear to have a website of their own, but you can find them on newcastle restaurant.com where it also reveals that there is another Sonny’s in Tynemouth. Oddly enough, both restaurants are in a street called ‘Front Street’ in their respective areas.

We’d been there on my wife’s recommendation, as she’d been twice before and — apparently — if you order the mussels you get an enormous great big tub thereof. She’d also described it as a ‘lovely little restaurant’ but she was concerned that it might not be doing particularly well because it hadn’t been busy either time she had been in.

So there was three adults (me, the wife, the elderly mother) and the two kids. Arriving at the restaurant, we were shown to a nice table. Unfortunately I can’t tell you much about the wine list as we didn’t really have any — bar one glass of house white. The menu however, I can give you a little more detail on as I picked up a copy on the way out…

Firstly, they offer a limited set menu, which is £9.90 for two courses. There isn’t a massive amount of choice, with only three starters and three main courses available, so we instead went à la carte.

We started with a couple of garlic bread pizzas (one with cheese, one with tomato). They were both very nice; presented pre-sliced with the slices nicely arranged. Admittedly, that’s hardly the most exciting sounding dish, but it was very nice, and the menu had offered a wider selection of starters with antipasto and gamberoni being only a couple of them on offer.

For the main course, while there was no specific kids menu (we would have just ordered one adult meal between ‘em), the restaurant were more than happy to make up kid-sized portions of the dishes. As it happened, the kids both went for spaghetti bolognese anyway.

The GLW ordered the Mussels alla champagne con pollo zuppa — mussels in a champagne and smoked chicken broth with home made chips. Now I had already heard that a large portion of mussels was involved, but even so I was quite surprised at the size of the dish. I would have tried this myself, only while I like mussels they don’t always seem to like me so I’m now generally wary of ‘em. However, I was told that it was very nice, and I can certainly attest to the fact that the pieces of smoked chicken with it were lovely.

Myself and the elderly mother both went for the Trifolata paradiscio which was simply gorgeous. This was ‘fillet beef strips with mushrooms, capsicums, Juliette pan flamed in vodka and gorgonzola cream with orborio rice’. This was also a little more expensive at £16.90 (compared to £10.80 for the mussels or £7.90 for an adult portion of spag bol..), but it was worth every penny. The sauce it was cooked in was exquisite — indeed when the waitress came over to ask if everything was okay, I made a point of telling her so.

This had an unexpected outcome: the chef came out of the kitchen and took the time to explain what was in the sauce, while I enthused about it to him. I think this made us both happy: him, that someone had enjoyed the sauce so much as to specifically comment on it and enthuse about it, and me, that he was willing to take the time and trouble to come out of the kitchen for a moment and talk to us about it.

The kids weren’t perfectly behaved, but as they were only causing a nuisance for us rather than for other diners, this was something we could live with, although it did illustrate the point that it was rapidly accelerating past their bedtime and so we decided not to stay for dessert.

The bill — not including tip — was around £55. When you consider the three adult main courses should have totalled over £40, then you had starters, food for the kids and drinks to add on top, I felt that this was more than reasonable; it was actually remarkably cheap when the quality of the food and the service is taken into consideration.

Oh, and while the restaurant wasn’t full, it was certainly not as empty as I had been led to believe (maybe about 60% full at 7:30pm?), and the atmosphere was fine — and the only other review of it I could find said that it had been packed when they had gone.

If you’re ever in Whickham, or presumably in Tynemouth, and you fancy popping out for an italian meal, I would certainly suggest that it is worth considering, particularly if you are willing to wander off the pizza/pasta trail. It’s easy enough to find!

At this point, I know some reviewers give ‘marks out of ten’ or ‘stars’ or something, but I would like to think that there is enough information in the text above to allow people work out what I thought of it without some numbers tacked on the end.