Mirissa has an abundance of restaurants. Most of which focuses on Italian cuisine than Sri Lankan. From Pizza to pasta to cappuccinos at every corner, Mirissa loves to do things Italian and we're not entirely sure why.
Located down the main road, Margherita Italiano happens to be yet another restaurant of the aforementioned variety. We were staying at the hostel right next to it, and as per the recommendation of the hostel staff, we decided to check this place out.
The Ambience
Green table clothes, green walls and a few brown chairs, the ambience at Margherita Italiano is not like the other restaurants in the area. While every other restaurant tries to look like they came out of a Kygo music video, this took a more traditional stance. With a clean space all topped up with the dusty tropical breeze of Mirissa town, the ambience at Margherita Italiano, isn't all fancy, but quite nice.
It has the capacity to seat at least a dozen people without any difficulty and given that most of the seating is outside, there's no chance of you feeling like a pack of sardines even if the space was completely full.
The Food
The menu at Margherita Italiano isn't large. In fact, it only strays to about a few salads, a bunch of pizzas, pasta and a couple more Italian dishes like Rissottos and such.
The Penne Pollo (Rs. 1100) was a delicious plate full of cream drenched penne made al dente accompanied by a bunch of prawns, chicken and veggies.
A warm bowl of pasta is always a good thing, and this was in no way different to that. Creamy with cut-up zucchini, bell peppers, at least 5 pretty big prawns and a handful of camouflaged chicken, this was quite nice.
However, our only qualm with this came from the fact that the taste of curry was a tad overpowering for a cream-based dish. We're not saying that the curry was bad. The curry added a sense of bizarreness to the pasta that we enjoyed, just, it's easy to get sick of after a couple of bites. Which was rather unfortunate given the fact that we did enjoy the dish.
We also got a Spaghetti Carbonara (Rs. 1200) with bacon. Creamier than your average carbonara, this bowl of silky smooth spaghetti was surrounded by bits of bacon. We're not even exaggerating when we say that every bite had at least 2 pieces of bacon stuck to it, and that's apart from the bacon on top, which is pretty crazy when you come to think about it.
Drenched in milk and not much else, this was all right. And while this wasn't in any way the best carbonara we've had, the amount of bacon in it brought it a lot closer than you'd think. If you do happen to visit the restaurant, we say go with this. The chances of you finding happiness in this bowl is a lot more likely than in anything else.
Service
The staff at Margherita Italiano was honestly some of the nicest people we came across when in Mirissa. From guiding you through the menu to bringing our food within 15 minutes (as promised), we have no complaints regarding the service here.
Conclusion
It's all right. The food wasn't amazing, but, it was good enough to make us feel a delicious sense of happiness after eating it and the ambience and service weren't too bad either. While we wouldn't necessarily recommend you go here, we wouldn't completely block this off the list if you were to look for Italian in Mirissa.
