A Taste of Italy: a seven-course night in Poole

If you fancy a proper Italian dinner without leaving the coast, there's a one-off evening worth circling on your calendar. A Taste of Italy lands at The Italian Villa in Compton Acres on Saturday 22 August, and it's built around a seven-course tasting menu that doesn't cut corners on the ingredients.

The evening starts with a glass of Midas Prosecco on arrival, then moves through seven courses each designed to pull something different from Italian cooking. Head Chef Tom and his team have put the menu together using ingredients supplied in partnership with The Italian Pantry, so the produce is as authentic as the dishes themselves. It's the kind of night that rewards sitting back and letting the courses do the work rather than rushing through.

There's a nice local thread running through the whole thing. Midas Prosecco is a Bournemouth-based company, set up in 2019, that sources its grapes from a single-estate vineyard in Friuli, Italy. The wine is made from Glera grapes and comes with some decent credentials: it's carbon neutral, uses 100% recyclable materials, and the vineyard runs without herbicides or pesticides. The Italian Pantry, meanwhile, is an Italian food store right in the heart of Compton Acres that imports its stock directly from Italy, which is where the ingredients for the menu come from. It's a genuinely local collaboration rather than a generic event.

Setting the scene is half the draw. The Italian Villa sits at 164 Canford Cliffs Road in Poole, an elegant building set within the grounds of stunning, privately owned gardens. Compton Acres itself is a ten-acre garden in the Canford Cliffs neighbourhood, laid out in the 1920s by Thomas William Simpson, and it's the kind of place that makes the whole evening feel like a bit of an occasion rather than just a meal out.

On the practical side, it's £85 a head, with a £20 deposit per person due at booking. Places are limited, so if you're keen, it's worth sorting it sooner rather than later rather than leaving it to the last minute. For anyone who wants to make a day of it, the gardens are open all year round, closing only on 25 and 26 December and 1 January, with regular hours from 10am to 4pm every day, stretching to 5pm in the hottest summer months.

So, if you're after a night that combines a serious tasting menu with a bit of Dorset charm, this is a good shout. A seven-course Italian feast, a glass of local prosecco to start, and a villa in the middle of ten acres of garden — it's a hard one to argue with for a Saturday night in August.