'A joyous, simple celebration': A Tavola, New Mills, reviewed

Most villages and towns in the UK have a neighbourhood Italian restaurant; everpresent, comforting and often unchanging.

They’ve formed a sort of network in the last half century, every “Welcome to” sign you pass soon enough followed by one for a family-run restaurant. 

So when I was told about A Tavola in New Mills - by everyone from my gastronomic Grandad to the guys from Blossoms - I knew it needed a visit. 

There’s just one crucial note to be made, it’s not simply Italian - it’s Sicilian.

Once The Beehive Inn, the building still has the squat exterior of a rural pub, somewhere to hunker down in the winter months.

Inside, however, it’s an eternal summer.

The interior is absolutely festooned with lively sunflower yellows, azure accents and enough characterful ornaments and bric-a-brac to fill five car boot sales. 

Such is the trend for understatement that some could call this level of decor ‘kitsch’. I call it joyous. In every corner and windowsill is an ornamental nod to the culture of that fiercely proud island. And yes that includes lemons and The Godfather.

I visited with my brother in law, Ed, out on a rare day off from the demands of a nearly one year old son. To paraphrase Michael Corleone, family eh? 

The lack of a toddler also means you can safely have several plates on a table at once without the usual vigilance. So with that in mind we picked up the substantial menus and set about that particularly enjoyable way of dining.

Our server - so sunny and bright you leave with a slight tan - suggested we may also like a pasta course. But considering where A Tavola hails from, and the fact it was a Friday, it was a day for an array of fish.

But firstly, focaccia. With a pint of Poretti this was a good place to start while browsing through the menu - which is admirably dedicated to letting you know what you’re eating and in what language. So a bit of ballast for the brain cells is just what was needed. 

You can easily sit and while away half an hour idly sipping away, deciding on dishes and getting distracted by pottery and dangling marionettes. There was no rush on this particular Friday mid-afternoon.

I think it’s fair to say fritto misto has become a bit of a victim of its own success; most places do it, but not all of them do it well. There’s a broad spectrum between frutti de mare that delivers on what its name suggests - fresh, crisp and invigorating - and a rather sad, deadening serving of batter. 

This was certainly at the fruitier end of the spectrum - a handsome and not overfacing bowl of fresh, vibrant flavours, all well seasoned and not remotely stodgy. There was whitebait, calamari, sardine fillets and king prawns, taking in a nice variety of fish of all shapes and sizes. The dish did as you hope it would - sets a fire in the appetite without then dampening it with too large a portion. A perfect place to start.

While pasta was unfortunately just a course too far, it would have been a shame not to have a stab at the specials. So we went for something I wouldn't necessarily expect to find on a Sicilian menu, deep-fried softshell crab, but then that's probably just my ignorance. So associated it is in my mind with Southeast Asian restaurants that I just assumed European menus tended to swerve it. Poor show on my part. Must do better. 

This was a very simple execution done very well, coated in a chilli-flecked batter that gave the dish a beautiful terracotta colour while bringing its own sense of spice to the fore. Sat simply on top of some quartered tomatoes, as fresh as you'd expect, with a herby oil dressing, it was over before we knew it. But then that's what starters are there for. 

It was onto the mains, and with a bottle of white - fina taif terre siciliane; a suggestion from our server when I explained that I tend to like white burgundies. An excellent suggestion, it was broad enough in flavours to be a good dinner wine but crucially not at the expense of its own deep characterful notes. A very pleasurable bottle that further emboldened the mains that we ate it with. Ed's usually a red man, but sometimes you have to pull rank. 

For main course Ed went for '9 gamberoni al arancia', or 'nine prawns with orange'. Again, you can rarely go wrong with simplicity. Artfully fanned around the plate and each of them plump enough to clearly be well fished, it's one of those dishes that you gluttonously think should be a starter, until you get half way through. Another simple delight. 

But the simplest delight, and one of the best things I've recently eaten on my travels, was the spada alla griglia, described as 'a traditional Sicilian dish of chargrilled fresh Sashimi Grade Swordfish steak dressed in Salmoriglio'.  

Salmoriglio is a sauce of lemon juice, olive oil, garlic, salt, and herbs. That's it. Nothing more needed. Simple things done well are why I love this job, and A Tavola's swordfish salmoriglio is why I sometimes wonder if it's all a dream. 

Swordfish doesn't really get the PR of other similarly ugly fishes - see monkfish's rise to the upper echelons - but when it's caught, cared for and cut in the way this was all that pales into comparison. A meatier fish than most, it more than stands up to heavier sauces but why bother when the gorgeous simplicity of lemon, olive oil and seasoning results in something like this. Perfectly chargrilled and needing nothing else. A wonderful dish.

Finally, you can't really leave a Sicilian restaurant without trying some ice cream. It just seems wrong. So in the spirit of things we each ordered two scoops (pistachio and vanilla for me). Then we were offered an upgrade, the tantalising prospect of the Sicilian take on an ice-cream sandwich, made with brioche. Go on then. 

They arrived with a knife satisfyingly sticking out, ready to be carved up into more manageable bites, but of course there's always the option of simply unhinging your jaw like a python and throwing dignity to the wind. I resisted temptation. The ice cream was that creamy consistency that speaks to it being homemade with high quality ingredients, and the brioche was light enough to let the gelato still be the star of the show. 

Apparently you can't leave a Sicilian restaurant without a limoncello either, so we kindly obliged and sat, pinned to our chairs by full stomachs, sipping on a sweet digestivo and feeling very pleased with ourselves.

I can understand the easy appeal of more usual takes on Italian restaurants. After all, the country's culinary variety village by village, neither mind region by region, is an embarrassment of riches. 

But you don't often see such a clear distinction being drawn, from menus and all the accompaniments to decor and everything in between. In being so unashamedly and specifically Sicilian, A Tavola opens up a world of flavours, traditions and ways of cooking that is like a new country altogether, ready to be explored. 

A Tavola, 67 Albion Road, New Mills, High Peak, SK22 3EY

A Tavola is on Confidential Guides