Fish and chip shop proprietors Renato and Angela Delvecchio buy prescription antibiotics online now have bigger fish to fry with their first restaurant business, the £670k Ciao Bella, in Glasgow’s Burnside area.
The Stonelaw Road eatery opened recently, just down the road from the chip shop business, Dello’s, that they’ve owned for some 30 years.
Renato and Angela had owned the former hairdressers for some time before the builders went in to bring Ciao Bella (‘Hello, beautiful’) to life. Says Renato, “I bought the premises 18 months ago for £300k, but sat on it for a while so that we could plan what we wanted to deliver. I spent a further £370k on the outfit and refurbishment by CM Design Consultants, which took around six months to complete in total, as they were so professional. I think that this job would have taken other companies a lot longer. As for the design, my wife and Angela and I are quite ‘blingy’ so this has come across in the design which is opulent with lots of gold, and we insisted on a high quality finish.”
The spend is evident in the finished product with its high end look and feel, and there are some superb finishes, plus quality fabrics and materials in evidence throughout the two-storey building, with the restaurant on the ground floor, and kitchen and toilets in the basement. There’s a bi-folding door that forms the frontage of the restaurant that can be fully opened in the summer for continental drinking and dining underneath an awning.
In order to arrive at all of this there were some structural changes required. Mark Brunjes, MD at CM Design Consultants, who delivered both the architecture and the design, said, “We’ve had a lot of experience designing in the Italian restaurant sector, and Renato liked what we had done to date. He brought the name ‘Ciao Bella’ to the table as a reference to the film La Dolce Vita, and there are nods to this all around the interior.
“He also needed to maximise the space to accommodate 60 covers to make it a viable business, so we had to excavate what was a limited basement and add a double-height extension to the rear. This now accommodates the staircase, the kitchens and the toilets, to allow more room on the ground floor.”
Antique gold has been used in the light shades, and the leather upholstery on the seating and there’s a gold tinge on account of the up-lighting buy prescription antibiotics online behind the smoky mirrors running parallel across the top of the banquettes on both walls. Up-lighting has also been used in the coffers in the ceiling, which reflect off the gold wallpaper and house more gold-shaded pendent lights.
The standout feature, however, has to be the illuminated glass frontage on the bar at the back left hand corner of the restaurant that casts a warm golden glow across the room, and looks a bit like molten lava. Says Renato of this addition, “This is one of my favourite pieces and it was installed by a company based down south called Translucent Creations that also did something buy prescription antibiotics online similar for Billy Lowe at Le Monde in Edinburgh.”
Other notable features are the black granite bar and table tops, a lovely intricately designed mirror that hangs above the service hoist just to the right of the bar, and this entire area has been covered in stainless steel for both low maintenance and a neater finish.
What I also liked very much was the fact that the couple’s personalities are evident in the design, like the mural of the Spanish steps in Rome, from the film La Dolce Vita, and tying in neatly with their Italian heritage at the same time, of course. On a more personal note, Renato’s two greatest passions are also represented – football and cars. He explains, “I’m an avid AC Milan fan buy prescription antibiotics online and I have a picture of two of their greatest players, Paolo Maldini and Fillipo Inzaghi, as buy prescription antibiotics online well as a picture of a million pound car from Ralph Lauren’s private collection.”
Also displayed on the wall are pictures from the couple’s private collection, including a wedding photograph and some pictures of Renato’s parents and grandparents. Next to these are some pictures stills from the film La Dolce Vita, all black and white, and in a mixture of silver and black frames.
The Delvecchios were buy prescription antibiotics online also keen to bring the same mark of quality to the food buy prescription antibiotics online offering. Explains Renato, “There’s no point investing this kind of money on the look of the place only to neglect other areas. That’s why I’ve also invested heavily in both the kitchen equipment and the chefs. I head hunted Thomas Watt of Italian Kitchen, Glasgow, fame, and as so often happens, he bought with him his long-time associate Boyd Danny, formerly of The Old Course Restaurant, St Andrews. I think that in Scotland there are always 1000 restaurants competing for 100 good chefs.”
On the day of my visit, a stream of customers were popping their heads in to book tables and to have a look at the restaurant, and one summed up the general feeling in the local area by telling Renato that they were the ‘talk of the steamie’, which seemed to please him immensely.
Jason Caddy
