Hi! Im BudBud Im a dog as it 'appens .... nip on the puter when me mum is watching Corrie or Emmerdale. Im a bit of a sorry state ... me mum attacked me as soon as I was born and took me eye out and sliced me head open so me human mum (well I say human mum ... she says stupid things like ... "Give Mummy a Kiss, when in fact she aint even the same genetic make up as me .... doesnt have a tail to wag or ears to prick up when shes excited...I know cos I sleep in the bedroom with her and me dad) ....Where was I ? Oh yeah right ... well they are right suckers these human "parents" of mine ... cos I aint that attractive (although personally I reckon wiv a few back handers I could come away wiv a Crufts certificate) I get spoilt rotten cos Im ugly and stuff ... then I saw yer website and I was gutted ! Thought to meself that young laddie needs a meal ... so I nicked her credit card and lo and behold ..... have one on me mate ! Heres me pic ..... sorry about me tongue ... its got a life of its own.
Happy scoffing
BudBud

One worry though - I'd left my digital camera at home, probably for the first time ever. After a bit of a panic I managed to borrow an older model off someone at work, which is why this weeks photos are smaller and a bit rounded at the corners.

Off to an Italian this week: iTs. iTs on Holland Park avenue is deceptively small from the outside, but it goes a long way back and opens up a bit too. It's very odd looking inside too - you go through the doorway and walk up a bright corridor, the left side made of glass so you can see in. There's black-painted ironwork and tiles and things. I've probably got this a bit wrong because it's slightly confusing - especially as you feel like you're going to break the glass by accident. Inside it's all white-painted walls and large airy spaces - it feels very cool indeed. The best seats are out the back - you pass through (in typically confusing fashion) part of the kitchen - it looks like there's a brick oven in the wall, and they make the coffee and poor the wine in this bit: all the stuff you'd normally expect to find behind a bar somewhere else in the room.

There's some nice simple pictures on the wall too, giving the room a much needed splash of colour. The tables are just the right size - not too big, not too small to be crowded. The service is very fast indeed - I've got my menu in moments, and pretty soon I'm ordering: Scaloppe al Marsala with the salad instead of french fries (as that's not very italian) and a beer. The only beer they have on the menu is Birra Moretti - an Italian lager which has a decent head, tastes lovely, but is pretty inoffensive (in other words it doesn't leave a lasting impression either way). They've got a pretty good website too here - I can't find one for iTs, even though they've got another 7 outlets in London and Stevenage (although doing a search for "its" is never likely ever to bring it up in a search engine - they've buggered their chances there).

Anyhow, on to the food! (I must learn not to ramble on this much).

Beer arrives quickly - very good, but I've talked about that already. Pretty soon after the food arrives - on two plates! The Scaloppe al Marsala is a rather large fillet of chicken covered in mushrooms and gravy. The salad is, well, it's a ton of shredded iceburg-type lettuce with two rings of pepper, a few circles of red and white onion, four quarters of a tomato and four slices of cucumber. I don't know what I was expecting... well, actually I do: a lot less lettuce, more of everything else. Why do restaurants always do this? Always a disappointment, and of course I leave the vast majority of the lettuce by the time I'm finished.

That's the moan out of the way - and trust me, it's the one and only point they drop. The fillet of chicken is pretty massive - wonderfully tender but still somehow rather dense, so your knife slides though nicely but your belly fills quickly. The gravy is a good thick chicken gravy (how do they do it? chicken gravy normally comes out as thin as water for me) that gives the chicken fillet a bit of a moisture-boost. The chicken itself isn't dry, but it's a big bit of chicken that needs a bit of variation as you eat and eat. Tiny sprigs of parsley sit on the gravy - not so big as to be one of the pointless un-eatable "garnishes" that most folk chuck on a plate of food unthinkingly, but small enough to actually eat along with the gravy and the chicken - it complements it nicely, and gives you another texture to chew on a little. Now, the mushrooms: the mushrooms are a little odd in their ordinariness - they have the taste and texture of button mushrooms, but they're massive! Very juicy, very flavoursome and absolutely perfect for the chicken.

And that's all I really have to say about the food: it's a fairly simple dish, so there's only so much you can say. But there's nothing wrong with simplicity: the Scaloppe al Marsala is delicious and filling, and I'd recommend a visit to iTs to anyone. So iTs gets 4 out of 5 points!

That final rating is pretty good - it'd be full marks if not for the salad. The food was otherwise perfect, the service friendly and super-fast, the environment was lovely and bright despite the greying weather outside, and all in all it was a wonderful lunchtime. Now, having spent just £12 of the donated £13.42, my kitty now stands at £3.12 - one day I'll do a lunch with all the spares, unless I spend too much next week...