La Vida Cafe Bar and Restaurant

Right, well here goes…

First on my hit list is ‘La Vida Café Barand Restaurant’ described by Groupon as a ‘Mediterranean restaurant with colourful and varied menu’ located in the centre of Leicester.  Sounds good, give it a go.

First impression was one of confusion. Wasn’t quite sure what I had walked into and what to expect from the evening. On the one hand La Vida had the makings of a restaurant with damask design wallpaper, white table clothes, formal place settings etc but this was coupled with an informal café style layout, feel and atmosphere. The menu was much the same.  Cheap and cheerful pizza and pasta dishes but this was mixed with a few other random offerings from Spain, Greece and Portugal as well as some expensive ‘A La Carte’ meat and fish dishes.

Seeing as the evening was a special occasion, I opted for more extravagant dishes, ordering the Gamba Piri Piri to start (Tiger prawns in chilli, wine and herb sauce, £5.95) followed by Sirloin Boscaiola (steak in rich red wine sauce with onions and pancetta, £14.90)

The starter didn’t look very exciting but it was nice to eat. About 9 prawns in a rich tomato sauce with lots of flavour and a serious kick of chilli, though there was something definitely missing. It was only really half a dish.  It would have benefited from being served on some chargrilled ciabatta or with some bread.  It defiantly needed something to make it more substantial and to help mop up all the lovely sauce at the end. I think that seems a reasonable expectation for a starter costing £6.

My main looked more impressive. A large sirloin steak with the red wine sauce served over the top.  Sadly this is where the dish peaked. My steak tasted of, well nothing actually. Not a flavour to be detected from any of the elements of the dish, just a big lump of meat swimming about in the sauce. I think the fact the pancetta looked suspiciously like bacon might have had something to do with it?  My fellow diner had chosen the sea bass which was served with tiger prawns, mussels and a wine and lemon sauce.  Except it transpired that there were in fact, no mussels, only the shells and despite the buckets of salt being added at various intervals, like my steak it too was clearing lacking in any flavour.

The accompanying side dishes didn’t fare much better.  The ‘chips’ were more like deep fried roast potatoes, shaped like wedges, cooked until they turned a lovely shade of ‘burnt’!  The vegetables, well, weren’t really vegetables by the time they were served.  The green had quite literally been boiled out of the broccoli which had consequently turned a shade of yellow. The carrots had managed to maintain their colour but sadly no texture and the cauliflower was missing, well the cauliflower! They had served us the leaves and the stalk but no actual vegetable. We did point this out to the staff who replaced the over cooked vegetables with some ever so less over cooked vegetables.  Yay!

For dessert, we both had the lemon cheesecake.  As with the starter, it was half a dish.  Having a very strong lemon flavor a dollop of crème fresh to balance things out and perhaps some fresh fruit to garish would have  helped it along a bit.  Oh and it had a soggy biscuit bottom…need I say more?

So, in summary La Vida sadly won’t be making my list of recommended places to eat in Leicester.  It needs to find itself and figure out what it wants to be.  A café it might be, but a restaurant it certainly is not!

Still I have learnt something from this experience…always read the small print ‘La Vida Café, Bar and Restaurant’.  I should have known it was suffering from an identity crisis!  The clue was in the title!

Scores on the doors:

Restaurant                             2/5

Food                                        2/5
Service                                    3/5
Value for money                   1/5

Total                                        8/20