Happy valentines day! It’s not long into Alasdair’s recovery period, so we weren’t overly keen to plan too far ahead anything special, but the day comes around and we’re both feeling up to a comparatively low key lunch date. Where else but our old friends at Pazzo? A very sexy carbonara arancini starts me off (well, technically the bubbles do, but let’s skip past that), replete with tiny pancetta crisp adorning it and a thick bed of aioli supporting it. I cannot resist a slice of their lasagne for my main, served ever-so-slightly deconstructed, the bechamel concentrated between the sheets of pasta along the mince, the tomato sauce spread across the plate, a lesson in contrasts with the basil oil. The crisp, melted layer of cheese atop does not suffice, and so a healthy snowfall of parmesan tops the whole thing off. I am greedy and devour it in a shockingly low number of bites. The tiramisu, though, is a more formidable enemy, a proper thick slab of a thing, angular and cuboid, densely packed with the lightest marscapone cream and with a surprising structural integrity given how well soaked the lady fingers are. Dom recommends us a dessert wine I’ve already forgotten in the fog of it all, but I trust him to either remember or to recommend us something equally good next time. How nice it is to have a home away from home like this.