L’Oca Ubriaca

I came here with a friend for some lunch during a shopping trip. We were tired and hungry and as is the usual for between 12:00 and 14:00 everything was closed.
We picked L’oca Ubriaca over the restaurant opposite and we weren’t disappointed! Behind the reasonably small frontage lies a little spot of heaven. I adored the décor; a mixture of exposed brickwork, beautiful (if not a little random) paintings of parrots and then cold industrial ventilation, strip lighting and metalwork.
We chose a table upstairs on the balcony and were quickly attended to by the waiter. Unfortunately we don’t speak Italian and he didn’t speak English so I can’t really comment too much on the standard of service but he was friendly about it rather than annoyed.
After a quick translation of a menu with a phrase book we plumped for a panini each. I couldn’t really decipher the rest of the menu but of the few other customers also eating their dishes looked amazing! The food was prepared at the bar, it arrived quickly and was reasonably delicious. Hard to be blown away by a sandwich but the ingredients were fresh and I was happy.
The only gripe would be that the bathroom seemed a little weird. There was a small window at floor level without any glass in. Obviously bit odd that anyone could walk past and catch a glimpse of you at your business, also pretty chilly in mid January. My hope is that it was a result of some renovations. There were also some exposed pipes and dodgy tiling, so hopefully this won’t be problem in the future. It was located in a little frosted glass house though so the novelty was enough to gloss over the down bits.
This is somewhere I would really like to come back to for an evening. The wine selection looked really good and it seemed like the perfect place for an intimate evening out.