Restaurant Review - Diva Piccola

I love Diva - I think the food is great, even though the restaurant is a bit out of our way and we therefore only manage to go there once or twice a year. So yesterday when my colleague and I decided to work out of Hauz Khas Village, trying out Diva Piccola was a natch.

It's on the main street of Hauz Khas Village, but one floor up, so to start with we struggled to find it. We had landed up there at 11:30 am, whereas the cafe opens only at 12 noon, so the first waiter to come up to us turned us away. We were almost out the door, when a second one bustled up and promptly asked us to sit, specifying that food could only be ordered after 12, but we could get something to drink.

Heaving a sigh of relief, we sat and began working away on our laptops - loads of work to get through, fortified with the delicious chocolate milkshare. The cafe has a relaxed ambience, nothing fancy, with comfortable leather-upholstered sofas and large windows letting in natural light, overlooking the main street of Hauz Khas Village. It's the kind of place that makes you feel like hanging out over a lazy lunch.

At noon precisely, the smiley waiter came up with the food menu. We decided to order a pizza (Ortolano - with aubergines and tomatoes) and a pasta ( angelhair with garlic and parsley). With our laptops spread out, our ubiquitous cellphones and the glasses of milkshake and water, the table was pretty packed. That's when the said waiter turned up with a suggestion that we could move to a larger table, by the window. We looked out onto the eclectic Hauz Khas scene as we rather quickly and greedily stuffed faces with the pizza - delicious, absolutely, super moist yet crisp - and the pasta which reminded me of vermicelli upma, and now has me thinking what else I could do with vermicelli a la pasta recipes. We finished off the meal with a cappucino each, to keep us awake through the client meeting to follow, and left, hugely satisfied.

Of course the food and the ambience were great. But what made the experience fabulous was the service - understanding of consumer's needs, flexible and oh-so-prompt, whether it was refilling our water glasses, clearing the table or bringing the bill. Truly outstanding.