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• Bread-ish awkwardness redeemed by vegan affogato.

My bloke and I came to Amico Bio for lunch, quite early in the day we thought, but it was already pretty busy -- a good sign! We were seated by a very friendly waitress and waited on by her and her colleague -- they were both pleasant and cheery throughout :) We weren't too hungry and we knew we were going to be eating a fancy dinner in the evening, so we decided to just order a main course option each, even though the menu is classic Italian style with lots and lots of courses. However, our waitress had other ideas and seemed totally baffled by the idea of ordering just one course! I'll admit, this did bug me a LITTLE, as we felt kinda bullied into ordering the bread-basket starter. Again, our waitress was friendly and nice but really, we didn't WANT bread! But bread we ended up getting... and actually, it was very nice. There was a LOT of it and we didn't want to finish the whole thing, but we did enjoy it! Unlike your usual bread basket there was a lot of variety... however, we were a bit leery of the fact that there seemed to be cheesy breadsticks in there, when it's marked as vegan on the menu! Anyway, after the slightly awkward bread-basket course (would've been better to get everything at once TBH), we got our mains. I had the tofu sausage dish and my bloke had the roasted pepper with puy lentils. When the plates arrived we kinda realised why the waitress had been so insistent about the bread -- the portions are not large. However, by this time we were full of carbs, so all was well. The tofu sausage was really delicious, well cooked and in a lovely arrangement with beetroot etc. I liked it a lot! My bloke was less impressed with his roast pepper -- the pepper itself was kinda lukewarm when it arrived (had maybe been sitting under the hotplate waiting for my dish?), and the puy lentils could have done with more flavour. Being full of bread I HADN'T WANTED DAMMIT, I couldn't try dessert :( However, aforementioned bloke was EXTREMELY excited by the vegan affogato, and claimed it made up for his less-than-fabby main dish. Yay? (Fun unrelated anecdote: While we were eating, two women came in and were seated. Upon realising the place was veggie, they looked horrified and started to leave. A waiter very pleasantly tried to convince them to stay, and one of them snootily announced, "WE DON'T EAT VEGETARIAN FOOD BECAUSE WE DON'T LIKE VEGETABLES!" The waiting staff looked so sad and baffled! It made us giggle, so thanks, Snooty Lady!)