Silvanos York Silvano's Restaurant in York 2 Cumberland Street York

A nicely placed italian restaurant in York, down towards the river. A recommendation brought me in here on a quite Friday night with a few friends. We started out just across the road at Oscar's Wine Bar for a drink and then came in here for a meal.

Sam Lewis

Wrote in to tell us:

This place has unfriendly staff the food was / is good but the general feeling of the place is not good to much in fighting.{from staff}.

Your webmaster observes

I am afraid I have to agree. This type of thing does tend to happen in family run Italian restaurants. There is a lot of interaction between the staff who with the hot Euro temperament are telling each other what they think of each other in their own language. They don't seem to take account of what the atmosphere they are creating around them is doing to their customers. The sauces that you can get in this place can be amazing but ...

Not the best italian I have had in York but they did try and it was obvious that there was some tension in the air amongst the staff. I must say though this should not have effected our meal we where there in good faith to pay for what we hoped would be nice but just turned out to be ok in the end.
5 of us all ordering wine, starters, main courses and a desert each.

It didn't start out well, the older member of staff that was there was quite stroppy in fact but the younger member who could well pass as the owners son, made up for it with a very pleasant demeanour. We ordered and then were unhurried in our meal as the place was not full.

When the starter came it was not a good one. The two ladies we were with had ordered a specific italian dish that was to come in an avocado. What arrived was basically a prawn cocktail in an avocado. Unfortunately for the staff this was picked up immediately and the miss representation was removed from our bill. Nice of them but uncalled for in the first place. Better in my mind if you get what you have ordered not what they have decided to [produce instead of what is on the menu.

Main courses were fine wine was good as were the deserts. Even the grumpy old guy from earlier started to get in a better mood as the evening went on.

A few mistakes but I will try it again and see how they fair on a busy night.

Silvanos