Style: Chic contemporary Food: New York Italian Price: £25 for three courses Wheelchair access: Yes
Italian restaurants come in two models. There is the local family favourite where the waiters say cheeky things to the bambinos and you can guess the menu without looking. You will know it by the badly painted mural of a Roman amphitheatre and the shrine to Inter Milan. Then there is the upmarket Italian where pizzas are frowned upon and you're considered frivolous if you have fewer than 16 courses.Both have their place, but what's missing is somewhere in the middle. This is where Amarone comes in. A basement restaurant with high-level stained-glass windows letting you see the ankles of passers-by on Buchanan Street, it offers pizza and pasta standards in an environment where you can imagine clinching a business deal.
The Italy it reflects is that of the Milan catwalk - cool, calm and collected - rather than that of the small-town trattoria. More properly, it's Italy filtered through the world of Tony Soprano on a night out with Carmela, all sophisticated New York jazz, arty black and white photos and staff in muted burgundy uniforms. Very Glasgow, in other words. Even the ubiquitous football photo, a large monochrome victory snap, has a touch of grainy class.
This comes at a price, however. The service, although brisk and efficient, is restrained to the point of indifference. They're so busy being discreet, they don't have time to be friendly.By aiming for what it regards as "educated diners", Amarone risks seeming pretentious, but its claims for superiority are at least justified by the food.At first glance, the menu looks very familiar - favourites such as bruschetta, seafood risotto, tomato pasta and pizza Napoletana are all present. But it doesn't stop there. Also included in the a la carte list are dishes you won't find in Pizza Hut, among them sea bream, chargrilled veal cutlet and Scottish sirloin steak.
Even when it comes to the pizzeria staples, there's invariably a twist. The pizza fungi, for example, has none of the indifferent sliced mushrooms you usually get, but succulent sauteed chunks of wild mushrooms on a crisp base. Despite her hoping for a deep-crust style pizza, my 13-year-old daughter wolfed it down happily, eating all but a final slice before she was full.This was after having put away several slices of our focaccia starter, commenting as she did so on the well-judged combination of caramelised red onions, cacciocavallo cheese and fresh, uncooked spinach. A mouthful of all those ingredients was a perfect match for the light and crunchy base.Leaving her to the pizza, I branched out with a melanane millefiore for my main course. Beautifully presented, it was a tower of aubergine slices and biscuity pastry served alongside a row of asparagus spears, baby tomatoes on the vine and, unusually, mashed potato. If it was let down by the dryness of the roasted aubergine and the dominance of the pastry, it was a very adventurous, multi-textured dish all the same.
And full marks for the tiramisu, a much abused pudding, here rich, moist and custard-like and well worth holding back for. My daughter, meanwhile, was equally satisfied with the Italian ice cream topped with Moreno cherries.
