The centre of Leiden is littered with restaurants, ranging from really bad to pretty good and from Asian to Italian. Just off the main shopping street, there is an Italian place called Fratelli. The place has a nice terrace in the summer, which makes it an attractive-looking place for lunch or dinner.
On the day of the visit, the sun was out and the terrace was open. As the place is just off the main shopping street, you will feel the buzz of the street without people knocking you off your seat. The terrace sits in front of the main entrance and the nice historic building. Inside the place is looking good and is not too big with relatively small tables.
The menu is pretty standard with all the usual ‘suspects’ for both starters and main dishes. Prices are not surprising and reasonable compared to the portion size. Looking at the dishes, some nice flavours are to be expected.
The selected starters, vitello tonnato and bruscetta with tomato, look really good. However, digging in it almost matched expectations. The tomato was the least favourite part of the first course as this really lacked flavour. There were herbs on it, but I really did not get it. The tomato itself was a little watery but the bread underneath it was pretty decent. The vitello tonnato was nice actually pretty good. Nicely presented dish where all favours of the meat, sauce and tuna are tasted. Decent dishes but nothing exceptional. For main course the pasta with tomato sauce was more of the same: Nice but nothing special. The pasta was a little too soft to my liking, but not that you’d need a straw to eat it. Because of this, I decided to skip dessert and go straight to my regular cup of tea.
Add it all up, the food is ok but nothing special. Considering the prices this is also to be expected, however, for these prices it should not be too difficult to find some more flavoursome food in the area. You will spend about EUR 30-40 euros on a meal here and you will have a nice evening outdoors when coming on a sunny day. Would I visit this restaurant again? Considering the amount of restaurants in the area, I seriously doubt it. Where good company can compensate for a lot, you still want to feel like you get value for money when eating out.