I DON'T like much to come between me a good mussel.
A glug of wine, a little garlic, some shallot and parsley and you've got heaven in a dish.
Those reduced, intensely flavoured mussely juices mingling with the wine make you want to dip your bread.
I'm still waiting for that to happen at Popolo.
It's an Italian-flavoured eaterie in the city's new Leopold Square. OK, most of them are – but the hospitality business obviously reckons the Great British Public can't get enough of pizza and pasta.
While the others (except Platillos) are chains, Popolo's only other link is in Newcastle, the company's HQ.
So there is an individual rather than a corporate feel and it's not a bad night out here, even if the chef can't cook up a decent bowl of mussels.
There's a great atmosphere in the square.
Even though it's a bit chilly people are at the tables each restaurant has parked outside to listed to an Asian band.
All Popolo's drinking customers are outside.
It has a downstairs bar specialising in cocktails and a cosy upstairs restaurant with dark chunky furniture, banquette seating, plastic chairs, wooden floors, exposed ducting, brick walls and classic film posters.
Pizzas should be good here judging by their garlic bread (£3.75), which has a good, firm, crispy base and a winning tomato topping, which we nibble before our starters.
I've got soup of the day, tomato, (£2.95) which is very pleasant with a good hit of basil – although come to think of it, we don't see a single basil leaf all night.
My wife is enjoying her tempura king prawns (£6.50) – about half a dozen with a very creditable light batter.
The menu promises chilli jam but this isn't. It is a sauce. Chefs these days are going mad for chilli jam and sometimes they make it themselves.
A chilli jam has sugar which tempers the chilli's aggressiveness. Put a tablespoonful of sugar in next time you make a too hot chilli or curry and you'll see it works.
Sadly, the sauce totally overwhelmed the prawns.
You can't go wrong with a Bolognese (offered with penne or tagliatelli) and, for £7.95 Popolo doesn't.
It serves up a good, hearty, meaty ragu strewed with parmesan shavings.
There are two mussel dishes here, one with white wine and garlic (marinara) and the other with tomato and chilli (£9.50), both served up with a bucket of rather good chunky chips. I can pretend I'm in Brussels.
Many chefs seem unaware that moules mariniere, or cozze marinara, doesn't come with cream. They like to put it in. The menu doesn't list it but I ask the waitress if the kitchen is so tempted with the marinara. It is.
Could I have it without cream? Just the wine and herbs.
Are you allergic? she asks.
It was not the time to tell her about the time I had mussels in cream at a now defunct Ecclesall Road restaurant.
It was fine until the last bivalve, a festering, rotten mussel and I imagined its awfulness leaking into the cream. It took a supreme effort of mind over stomach to stop my dinner coming straight back up.
Since then I have never had them with cream.
The waitress is anxious for me to have the tomato and chilli version but I've had enough tomato already.
They are awful, overcooked to the point of being shrivelled and absolutely tasteless.
What is more, the liquor, which needs to be seriously reduced, doesn't have a hint of flavour either.
If I were a betting man I'd say these were steamed naked in a combi oven rather than in the wine, added later, but the waitress said no.
"That's why I suggested the tomato so they wouldn't be so bland."
Obviously Popolo and I are on different culinary planets.
We finished off with a shared tirmisu (£4) which was perfectly pleasant without being remarkable.
We paid £34.75 for food and another £7.65 for two glasses of house wine.
OK but avoid the mussels.
Leopold Square, Sheffield.
Tel: 0114 275 8405.
Open all week, noon to midnight (until 1am Wed and 2am Thur-Sat). Credit cards. First floor restaurant (disabled lift). Music. Outside seats to bar. Street parking.
My star ratings (out of five):
Food ***
Atmosphere ****
Service ***
Value ***
Italian restaurant. Do not compare ratings between places of different style or price.
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