My experience at an Italian restaurant in a perfect Harrogate location for a sunny day

Not so Divino Italian restaurant situated in a prominent spot at 3 Ripon Road just across the road from Harrogate’s glittering Royal Hall in the centre of the town’s conference trade.

I know the place well. In the last two decades, the address has been home to Joe Rigatoni’s Italian restaurant and Lucia Wine Bar & Grill and before that it was Kaiten Sushi & Sake Bar.

You get the picture.

Divino was launched just more than a year ago and all it took to entice me to return was a simple proposition by the proprietor.

Sit down for lunch and see for yourself that there is something new under the sun.

It has to be said, things certainly have changed.

There’s not only a buzz in this multi-layered, multi-roomed, multi-bar-ed restaurant involving the staff, as well as the customers, it also looks and feels radically different.

Love and care has clearly been applied inside its vast glass vistas, not forgetting money.

More glamorous brasserie than rustic trattoria in look, the interior design of this perfectly located establishment with its rich greens and reds says this is a serious place to unwind, sample good food and drink and enjoy yourself properly.

But where to sit?

One of the several different rooms on Divino’s three floors?

A private room? But I didn’t book.

In the courtyard with its own bar? The sun is shining, so I take a seat in the balcony with a view high above the street below; the perfect place to relax on a sunny day.

Chatting to the company’s general manager Neil Mendoza and the restaurant’s general manger Gabriel Sosa; both of them vastly experienced in the trade, the next thing that becomes apparent is that Divino doesn’t do “conveyor belt service”.

There’s an old-fashioned, personal and friendly touch to everything which harks back to those lost days when people believed "the customer is always right".

With a brigade of chefs from award-winning restaurants, the menu plays to the many strengths of authentic Italian food.

There’s an extensive choice of pasta, fish, steak and pasta dishes – and an early bird and a specials menu which changes a few times a month.

In my book, the way to test any Italian restaurant is the pasta, so I try two dishes.

Ravioli di cinghiale e sugo di pomodoro – pasta parcels filled with slow cooked wild boar in a red wine, parmesan and tomato sauce.

Paccheri allo stracotto – large pasta tubes with shredded braised beef, marsala wine and creamy burrata cheese.

Both are deliciously flavoursome but, while I like the former, I love the latter with its melt in the mouth richness.

The dessert menu looks good, too, as does the extensive wine list from Siclily and Emilia-Romagna and Sardinia with a surprising number of good wines available by the glass.

Then, there’s the delicious-sounding cocktails list, including a Saint Caterina and an Amalfi Coast Spritz.

But this isn’t the 1990s. I have a job of work to do.

I have the merest sip of a red and a white and draw the line there.

Being lunchtime, there are none of the musical tribute acts that Divino plays host to occasionally in the evening, Tom Jones, Frank Sinatra or the one coming up next, ABBA (book ahead for September 10).

I’ve not spotted any well-known footballers or people from TV, either, though I’m told they are there on a busy Saturday night on occasion.

But I’ve seen and sampled enough.

I accepted the invitation, I’ve sat down for lunch and I’ve seen Divino Italian restaurant for myself.

I’m not sure I’ve discovered something new under the sun but, I’ll tell you what, I would go back to number 3 Ripon Road these days.

It appears, finally, to have shaken off those ghosts of the past.