York is full of history, secrets, and hidden gems. In this series, Vision will be bringing you all our favourites – the cafés, the restuarants, the boutiques, the bars, the beauty spots. Check back weekly for a new update, you don’t want to miss a single one! You won’t find a tourist trap or cliché here – this is a guide to York like no other.
Our favourite… Italian Restaurant
Il Paradiso Del Cibo, 40 Walmgate
It’s not often you discover a town’s Italian restaurant where the Italians go to eat, and where every single one is a close and intimate friend of the owner. But once you’ve found it, you should never stop going. This is exactly the vibe of Il Paradiso – it is endlessly, authentically charming.
The first time we ate at Il Paradiso our table faced the door to the kitchen, and each time it swung open we glimpsed the terracotta pot of fresh basil, the mountainous block of parmesan and the vigorous slicing of freshly baked Italian bread. We could smell tomatoes and garlic, and could hear streams of agitated Italian. If it weren’t for the drizzly and distinctly Yorkshire rain outside, we could have been sat in a Tuscan trattoria. And that was before the food even arrived.
The lunch menu, offering any pizza or pasta plus a beer or glass of wine, was excellent value at £6.95, with many of the main dishes priced above that on their own. The place was packed with tables of colleagues ditching the uninspiring sandwich and taking advantage of the swift service for an out-of-the-office lunch.
The food was fantastically authentic: a perfectly thin pizza topped with prosciutto, and a brilliant freshly made lasagne in the richest tomato sauce imaginable, both complimented by choices from the extensive list of wines and continental beers.
Walmgate isn’t York’s ‘restaurant quarter’, but there are a handful of really excellent eateries here (Melton’s Too and Khao San Road, to mention two) and Il Paradiso certainly holds its own amongst them. The ‘off the beaten track’ feel to the street is definitely preferable to ‘soulless chain restaurant’ or ‘overpriced tourist trap’. Note that Il Paradiso doesn’t accept credit or debit cards (usually an annoyance, here it just seems to strangely add to its authenticity), so be sure to bring cash.
One meal here will be enough to have you recommending it to all your friends. Unless, of course, you think it’s just too good a secret to share.