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The best restaurants serving Italian food in Boreham and The Leighs Chelmsford East of England

1 Restaurants on GastroRanking

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5.0

62 Opinions

location-icon179 Hornchurch Highstreet, England
Italian
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We visited The Aviary for the first time at the end of the August.It was lovely.We wondered if we had just been lucky or if such fantastic food is par for the Course. Therefore we returned in October and I can report that it was no fluke and this restaurant is really special. Since our first visit it has been refurbished and also created a separate room acting as a bar serving light food. We stayed with the beautifully appointed restaurant and chose from their special lunch menu which is very good value at £ 25 for three courses and offers a number of choices with a diverse range of options. I started with the satay chicken with peanut sauce.In common with all the courses the presentation was superb.The chicken was very moist and the sauce was excellent.My wife opted for the avocado prawn and was surprised and happy that not only did it taste nice but the serving was most generous. We both had calves liver and crispy bacon served with a jus,mashed potato and broccoli.It was perfect.Every component of the dish was clearly made with such care and creativity.The sauce was enjoyably rich with a hint of sweetness.The chef clearly cares about the food he produces and succeeds with flying colours. For dessert we could choose any from the a la carte menu.I chose to have the banana bread pudding which was very nice and bananary ! My wife had sticky toffee pudding serviced with vanilla ice cream which she thought fabulous but she said it would have tasted even better if served with custard. The waitress whose name we found out to be Egle was brilliant.She made us feel very welcome,was very efficient and helpful and also had a lovely personality.She was proof of how important a server or manager is. A restaurant close by still very good but not as good as The Aviary had a great manager but she left and her departure left a real void. The Aviary is very fortunate indeed to have such a brilliant employee. We only have one concern and that is in trying to offer changes on the lunch menu more regularly some great dishes are taken off like the Atlantic cod.No doubt the calves liver will be replaced in time which would be sad as rather surprisingly it is not offered on the a la carte menu. It so happens that both our visits have been at lunch time.We are planning to go in the evening too.The prices for the evening are certainly no higher than those for the other high end restaurants indeed maybe slightly less. All in all The Aviary is a stunning restaurant both aesthetically and with the quality of the food.It is one of those rare places where you know you are going to be a regular after the first bite of food.