After our little trundle around the Christmas market, we needed warming up and feeding so had a little wander down a few streets and stumbled across Ask Italian.  It turns out that this is quite a famous chain.  Who knew!

We walked in and it was absolute bedlam!  They did however do gluten free pasta so it was worth the wait to be acknowledged.  I did question that decision when a scruffy little chap came over and cracked what turned out to be a joke.  He was the manager on duty by all accounts so why he thought to reply to my request for a table with “computer says no” is beyond me.  It is apparently a quote from Little Britain.

They did, despite the joke, have a table and after 5 minutes of waiting for him to stop chatting to his coworkers to clear the debris from the party seated there before us, we were good to go.

Well, I say good to go but when they offer both gluten free pasta AND pizza, it’s not going to be a quick or easy decision for me really.  At all.  Thankfully it was only lunch time so I didn’t have to pick out a starter and dessert too.  I would have been there ALLLL day otherwise!

My decision was made somewhat easier by The Boy gallantly suggesting that I order both pizza and pasta, and we all share the pizza.  He is a selfless angel!!!!

So….

The pizza, after quite a struggle with my own mind, ended up being a margarita.  It looks a little sad, and it wasn’t the best I have ever had, but it was nice and definitely hit the spot.

My thought process for the margarita btw was that we would all be having different pasta dishes so a margarita would compliment everything.  If I had gone pork heavy (always my instinct) then it could potentially have conflicted with our main courses.

Not mine though…

I went with the carbonara.  It had (pork!) bacon bits in it so it would have been ok!!

I’ve not had carbonara for years but it the lady on the table next to us had it and it looked amazing and that swayed my decision in its favour.  Obviously it wasn’t as pretty with the gluten free fussili pasta, but it was incredibly tasty.  I just wish I had my old stomach so I could have eaten it all.  I had to be so careful to only eat a little of it.  I was going to take the leftovers with me but I decided that would be a bad idea too because I would just have a little bite more and a little bite more as I walked back to the car, and then be sick all the way home!

I cannot tell you if this was a particularly good dish because it’s been so incredibly long since I’ve had one that I have nothing to compare it to.  I really enjoyed it though so would recommend it on that basis!

This is the carbonara with chicken – with the real linguine pasta!  The Boy really enjoyed it.  The only thing he would say is that it could have been a little creamier but then again he really likes food with lots of sauce and things.

Mum went for ‘penne al pollo della casa’ – creamy chicken and mushroom pasta.  She said it was, and I quote “very yummy”.  I didn’t try and because I didn’t want to stop eating mine.  That is literally the only reason.  It looked and smelt delicious.  Just a shame it didn’t come out until quite some time after ours were delivered to the table.

By the time we were done, there really was no room for desserts.  We just had to get the bill and go for another little walk to burn it off.

I had such a lovely meal and would happily go again.  Next time I would probably actually order the exact same thing.  I really enjoyed it and despite the chaos of fairly disorganised staff and probably being short staffed, the food made up for it all.

I don’t know how I managed to stay awake on the drive home.  I was very close to a very happy carb coma!