A STYLISH restaurant with good food, attractively presented, served by charming, helpful waiters – and very affordable. What more could you ask?

Add to those essential ingredients the spice that you are helping the training and development of the next generation of chefs and hospitality staff, and you have a recipe for customer satisfaction.

The DaVinci Restaurant at Yeovil College offers breakfast and lunch for visitors to the college, local residents, staff and students and their families, early evening or pre-theatre dinners and occasional special events during term-time.

While it is a training restaurant, the college’s hospitality lecturers, including Steven Lowrie, who teaches food and beverage service, ensure that the food and service are of the high standard that customers would expect.

On the day we went, the restaurant was busy with local business people and residents – some regular customers – enjoying a menu that included Thai-influenced dishes, Italian, Mediterranean and modern British with choices for vegetarians.

Starters were Thai spinach soup with crab dumplings, prawn skewers with chilli and garlic and mozzarella, tomato and basil salad with red onion salsa.

The main course included grilled Mediterranean vegetable salad with polenta and balsamic dressing, pork souvlaki with braised lemon rice, traditional beef lasagne with garlic bruschetta and mixed salad and cod a l’Orly with puree de petits pois and pommes frites.

Among the pudding choices were poached pear with shortbread biscuits, creme brulee and lemon souffle pudding with creme anglaise.

The restaurant has an alcohol licence – essential training for future restaurant or hotel staff – with a good selection of wines, as well as beers (including two of our favourites, Peroni and Badger’s Fursty Ferret), liqueurs and a selection of cocktails, some classics and a few devised by the DaVinci team, such as the DaVinci Dazzler (brandy, cava, brown sugar and angostura bitters) – and taste tingling non-alcoholic cocktails, too.

Tea drinkers have a good choice that includes Earl Grey and peppermint, and there are fruit juices, sparkling water, and espresso and other coffees.

The DaVinci is open to the public five days a week. Breakfast is served from 7.30 to 9am and lunch from noon to 1pm. There are also gourmet lunches on Wednesdays, prepared by Level 3 students. A typical lunch would cost about £8 for three courses, and since the portions are generous most people would be satisfied with two.

The evening menu is served from 4.30 to 6.30pm, in time for diners to be finished to go to Yeovil theatres and cinemas, and to Cinematheque screenings in the college’s main hall. The three courses feature a similar variety to lunchtime –­ soup or breaded brie with cranberry sauce as a starter, hunter’s chicken, fish curry or tomato and mozzarella pasta and Belgian waffle with icecream or chocolate brownies icecream sundae.

Special events in the spring include a steak night on Wednesday 23rd April, as part of British Beef Week.

Hospitality courses at Yeovil College include City & Guilds Hospitality Industry and Professional Cookery diplomas, at Levels 1, 2 and 3, VRO Diploma in Advanced Professional Cookery (Level 3), and intermediate and advanced apprenticeships in professional cookery, hospitality, supervision and leadership.

For more information about the DaVinci Restaurant or to book a meal, please ring 01935 845341.

For more information about hospitality courses at Yeovil College visit www.yeovil.ac.uk

 

Pictured are the DaVinci restaurant team, Shannon Wiltshire, Chantal Tucker, Rhianna Walters, Ashley Maber, Niel Heathers, Shannon Cochrane, Shannan Abbott, Daniel Holt