To the point
Pro Freshly made Italian stuff
Con Needs polishing
Pay
€€
Per Person
€20-€22 Shared Starter and dessert, soft drink. El Tenedor Discount may be available.
Gratis: chupito and a mini cake-tasting.
Find
Il Cono's Website
Access One step to street. Uneven floors.
In Short
Hopes? Something truly Italian
Reality? Good intentions, but work needed.
First Impressions? Plastic grass and LOUD music.
A USP? Pasta in paper cones.
The food in three words? Not tasty enough.
Can they get the staff? One on duty. Sufficient
Service with a smile? Very friendly, keen to go bilingual.
Friend friendly? Not top of a recommendation list as of now.
Rating for dating? Decor works, food conservative.
Tip? No.
Change one thing? Seasoning!
Going back? Probably not.
Compare & Contrast
In Pictures
On Google Images
What's the story?
An Italian restaurant in need of a talking to.
Prejudice is terrible. It blinds the mind to opportunity. It builds pointless barriers. It makes your world as small as your mind. So, confront it. Break it. (Point of order: this naturally excludes our heartfelt wish for all reggaeton ever made to be launched into deep space by Elon Musk. That's not prejudice, that's merely good manners to your ears.)
Ours is street food restaurants. It's an intelligence-of-the-eater testing term. But, test prejudices. How would an Italian version go?
Underwhelmingly.
Almost everything needs more seasoning!
The tastiest thing today was Provolone with beer marmalade. How you'd eat this food on a street in a red hot terracotta pot, I have not a Scooby. It wouldn't be much fun for your pinkies. But this was fine. Some nice, fresh, foccacia strips for scoopage. A good starter to share.
The pizzaiolo was flinging his dough in the cucina, so it demanded trying. And so our newly established pizza principle. You should be caught at the first bite. And what should get you is, in most cases:
But it's classic Madrid, this. A mass of mozarella. And not enough salt in the dough. Or tom in the tomato. On the Diavola we tried there's decent, scorched salami. But chilli oil? Black pepper? 0/2 scored. Once welcome details, these days they're near essentials. So, better than some chains, but work needed.
But here you really have test the sig dish. So, it's penne with green pesto - in a cardboard cone. It looks very pretty and the welcome add of good fresh parmesan in that top flap is the kind of detail the pizza needs.
But again, this needed more oomph. A very creamy - mild - pesto, it rapidly showed up a practical problem of this style of cone-sumption. As a dedicated chip eater would tell you, the final spuds have most bite because, shoutout to Sir Isaac, everything you splash on sinks to the bottom.
There's a gag there. But bottom jokes are beneath us.
Nicely random-length, fresh penne and probably enough sauce, but most of it was lurking deep below. So I ended up gamely stabbing at soggy pasta pieces with my fork. My strongest impression? A nightmarish, post-hipsterificated vision of a chip-free English seaside holiday.
Thing is, it's all a bit confused. A cone is for holding and walking. Probably simultaneously. Even Prime Ministers can multitask to that level. But this one's for sitting and looking at. So it needs a - rather smart - stand.
But while the aesthetics work, it doesn't stand up too well, ethically. The plasticised cone is very distinctive, but is it washable or recyclable? If not, it's creating entirely unnecessary waste. We appreciate the USP is pasta in a cone. Fine. But let google be your friend. Order 100-odd of them. It'd probably work out cheaper over 5+ years. Keep the paper for takeouts and you might enhance your USP.
We ended with a pannacotta. It had wobble but needed more vanilla. Fruit of the forest sauce needed not to have come from a bottle. And if you've wondered about adding a splodge of UHTplasticream and a dusting of icing sugar to pannacotta - don't.
Some very friendly service - but think about what do with serviettes that have seen the floor - helped things and we got a free taste-test of a new oreo dessert that needs measuring in gym-hours not calories. But over-noisy music, food arrival and plate removal seperately and a thoughtless customer smoking and hold the door open on a freezing day really pulled down our impression.
Well meaning, but work really needed. And, yes, our Streetfood prejudeice sadly still needs breaking.
Dish of the day: Provolone
Pro Freshly made Italian stuff
Con Needs polishing
Pay
€€
Per Person
€20-€22 Shared Starter and dessert, soft drink. El Tenedor Discount may be available.
Gratis: chupito and a mini cake-tasting.
Find
Il Cono's Website
Access One step to street. Uneven floors.
In Short
Hopes? Something truly Italian
Reality? Good intentions, but work needed.
First Impressions? Plastic grass and LOUD music.
A USP? Pasta in paper cones.
The food in three words? Not tasty enough.
Can they get the staff? One on duty. Sufficient
Service with a smile? Very friendly, keen to go bilingual.
Friend friendly? Not top of a recommendation list as of now.
Rating for dating? Decor works, food conservative.
Tip? No.
Change one thing? Seasoning!
Going back? Probably not.
Compare & Contrast
In Pictures
On Google Images
What's the story?
An Italian restaurant in need of a talking to.
Prejudice is terrible. It blinds the mind to opportunity. It builds pointless barriers. It makes your world as small as your mind. So, confront it. Break it. (Point of order: this naturally excludes our heartfelt wish for all reggaeton ever made to be launched into deep space by Elon Musk. That's not prejudice, that's merely good manners to your ears.)
Ours is street food restaurants. It's an intelligence-of-the-eater testing term. But, test prejudices. How would an Italian version go?
Underwhelmingly.
Almost everything needs more seasoning!
The tastiest thing today was Provolone with beer marmalade. How you'd eat this food on a street in a red hot terracotta pot, I have not a Scooby. It wouldn't be much fun for your pinkies. But this was fine. Some nice, fresh, foccacia strips for scoopage. A good starter to share.
The pizzaiolo was flinging his dough in the cucina, so it demanded trying. And so our newly established pizza principle. You should be caught at the first bite. And what should get you is, in most cases:
Toooooomaaaatoooo!
But it's classic Madrid, this. A mass of mozarella. And not enough salt in the dough. Or tom in the tomato. On the Diavola we tried there's decent, scorched salami. But chilli oil? Black pepper? 0/2 scored. Once welcome details, these days they're near essentials. So, better than some chains, but work needed.
But here you really have test the sig dish. So, it's penne with green pesto - in a cardboard cone. It looks very pretty and the welcome add of good fresh parmesan in that top flap is the kind of detail the pizza needs.
But again, this needed more oomph. A very creamy - mild - pesto, it rapidly showed up a practical problem of this style of cone-sumption. As a dedicated chip eater would tell you, the final spuds have most bite because, shoutout to Sir Isaac, everything you splash on sinks to the bottom.
There's a gag there. But bottom jokes are beneath us.
Nicely random-length, fresh penne and probably enough sauce, but most of it was lurking deep below. So I ended up gamely stabbing at soggy pasta pieces with my fork. My strongest impression? A nightmarish, post-hipsterificated vision of a chip-free English seaside holiday.
Thing is, it's all a bit confused. A cone is for holding and walking. Probably simultaneously. Even Prime Ministers can multitask to that level. But this one's for sitting and looking at. So it needs a - rather smart - stand.
But while the aesthetics work, it doesn't stand up too well, ethically. The plasticised cone is very distinctive, but is it washable or recyclable? If not, it's creating entirely unnecessary waste. We appreciate the USP is pasta in a cone. Fine. But let google be your friend. Order 100-odd of them. It'd probably work out cheaper over 5+ years. Keep the paper for takeouts and you might enhance your USP.
We ended with a pannacotta. It had wobble but needed more vanilla. Fruit of the forest sauce needed not to have come from a bottle. And if you've wondered about adding a splodge of UHTplasticream and a dusting of icing sugar to pannacotta - don't.
Some very friendly service - but think about what do with serviettes that have seen the floor - helped things and we got a free taste-test of a new oreo dessert that needs measuring in gym-hours not calories. But over-noisy music, food arrival and plate removal seperately and a thoughtless customer smoking and hold the door open on a freezing day really pulled down our impression.
Well meaning, but work really needed. And, yes, our Streetfood prejudeice sadly still needs breaking.
Dish of the day: Provolone