Restaurants in Lincolnshire: San Pietro
For a happy new year (or rather ‘un felice anno nuovo’), a visit to North Lincolnshire’s San Pietro is a must to enjoy exceptional Mediterranean cuisine and a very warm welcome!
Cold outside. Bit grey, too. Never mind though, because there’s always a warm welcome at San Pietro, expressed through conviviality, the cuisine and the culture of the Mediterranean and especially Sicily, where Pietro Catalano grew up.
For two decades he has been keen to continue bringing an authentic and enjoyable dining experience to North Lincolnshire, and the latest iteration of the San Pietro experience is chef patron Pietro and Head Chef Chris Grist’s new Esperienza Siciliana – a cena (in the evening) or a pranzo (lunchtime).
The two new menus run alongside San Pietro’s existing menus. Menu Del Giorno is a great value prix fixe menu available during the daytime and Tuesday to Friday during evening service, offering two or three courses for £29.50 and £38 respectively.
À la carte dining is also available during lunchtime and evening service, along with dedicated Sunday lunches and afternoon tea too. Husband and wife team Pietro & Michelle Catalano established San Pietro in 2003, completing a refurbishment and installing a new kitchen for a team of around five chefs to work.
In 2015, the couple also added boutique accommodation with 14 bedrooms adjacent to the restaurant, a Grade II-listed former mill dating back to the 19th century. Today the circular mill tower provides a lounge and private dining room, whilst the rest of the building provides a good-sized lounge for drinks plus the main restaurant and a function room. There’s a lovely terrace for the warmer months too, with an outdoor kitchen and dedicated menu, plus a further function suite in the accommodation wing for up to 100 people.
The hotel has been awarded two AA rosette status, and in last year’s Destination Lincolnshire Tourism Excellence Awards the restaurant took The Taste of Lincolnshire and Rutland Award… little surprise, given that the team is so committed to providing a great experience for diners.
Each lunch experience follows a tasting menu format, the lunchtime version comprising six courses for a very reasonable £49/head plus an optional flight of wine for £39. The evening experience is an eight-course menu with optional cheese course for £85/head plus a Sicilian wine flight comprising six wines paired to the constantly evolving menu, at £55/head.
Both menus begin with a choice of Stuzzicini, akin to canapés or snacks, including our blinis with sun-dried tomatoes which were served under a black bowl with wisps of smoke during the unveiling.
It’s a reference to Mount Etna, situated between Messina and Catania, and like other dishes throughout the menu, there are similar references to Sicily’s landmarks and key cities from Marsala to Palermo to Pietro’s own town, Villalba, which is especially well-known for producing cereals, grapes, tomatoes (Sagra del Pomodoro is the town’s annual tomato festival), plus pulses and of course olives to make the speciality olive oil which Michelle and Pietro bring back from the family’s estate to use in the restaurant’s menus.
Crucially, this is not merely pastiche of Mediterranean dining but rather an authentic experience underwritten by Pietro’s use of specially-imported ingredients. In addition, the restaurant has a carefully-chosen range of suppliers closer to home from R&J Butchers who provide meat via a co-operative of farmers, to DNA Fish Supplies of Cleethorpes who provide fresh fish daily via Grimsby’s fish market, and his preferred greengrocer, County Fresh, although Pietro does enjoy mooching around local markets and talking to other local suppliers to see what’s good, and of course, what’s seasonal.
Everything that the restaurant produces is made in-house, from sauces and desserts to bread and pasta, to ice creams, sorbets and petits fours.
To get an idea of the dining culture that Pietro is trying to convey, it’s worth visiting the restaurant’s website where a beautifully-produced video will take the viewer from a fresh Scunthorpe in January to the village of Villalba with its population of just under 2,000 and vast panoramas of Sicilian countryside, populated in the 18th century.
Sicilian cuisine tends to be punchier than Italian dishes, with historic Arabian influences imparting a point of difference, such as the combining of sweet and savoury flavours: for instance in our Filletto Rossini with its sweet Marsala and umami flavour courtesy of black truffle.
This edition of Pride is published just before the Christmas break, and many dates are booked up already, but Michelle reckons that it’s still worth a phone call for availability close to Christmas or New Year, as there can be the odd table free.
Otherwise, look out for dinner bed and breakfast packages which will allow you to enjoy San Pietro’s quirky contemporary rooms, and book as early as possible for Valentine’s Day dining, given that Sicilians and Romance are synonymous. Subscribing to a monthly newsletter and becoming one of San Pietro’s amici, is recommended too in order to hear about late availability and special offers.
Undoubtedly, San Pietro offers something really unique in terms of the authenticity of its Mediterranean cuisine, the quality of the dishes that Pietro, Chris and the team produce, but generally the warm welcome and feel that San Pietro evokes. It’s a fun, polished and really enjoyable place to enjoy some beautifully envisaged and brilliantly executed dishes, and it’s guaranteed to warm up your winter!
San Pietro, North Lincolnshire
The Pitch: “For more than 20 years, San Pietro has brought Lincolnshire and the
surrounding boroughs an irreplicable authenticity derived straight from the foothills of Sicily.”
Opening Hours: Tuesday 6pm – 9.30pm, Thursday to Saturday 12 noon – 1.30pm, 6pm-9.30pm. Sunday 12 noon – 3pm.
San Pietro, High Street East, Scunthorpe DN15 6UH.
Call 01724 277774 or see www.sanpietro.uk.com.