OK, the game's up. Those of you who note these things may have noticed that this is the third Italian restaurant your reviewer has visited in as many months. And given that this part of the world is not particularly renowned for the number of its Italian restaurants, readers may legitimately ask: what's going on?

Does the editor run a sideline in pasta imports or a concession for Amaretti biscotti? No, but he does have a fondness for Italian food which dates back to a revelatory moment in his teens when a couple of days spent with an Italian family taught him that there was more to food than the need-to-refuel impulse bred from too many visits to his boarding school canteen.

Despite not speaking a word of Italian, I found meals at that family's table very special, totally unpretentious and full of honest, simple flavours and textures. A golden coming-of-age moment which has never left me.

Which explains why I home into Italian restaurants like a pigeon to its loft - a sort of culinary comfort blanket. And why, on a chilly March Monday evening, the Warnes were sitting in Latino's restaurant in Richmond's Trinity Church Square.

Sad to report, it did not recreate that Damascene teenage moment.

The restaurant is on the first floor and reached by a chilly passageway and stairs leading to the small bar and dining area which, on our arrival, was as chilly as the passageway.

Gratifyingly, it was almost half-full which for a Monday evening out-of-season is good going.

We ignored the rather tawdry decor which brought to mind the set of BBC sitcom in an Italian restaurant in the Seventies. To the best of my knowledge there wasn't a Seventies BBC sitcom set in an Italian restaurant, but if there had been this is what it would have looked like. Chianti bottles and plastic grapes adorned the ceiling, paper cloths the tables

The patron, Des Rivera, is Italian bonhomie personified, much given to joining in with Dean Martin on the background music.

The starters we ordered were very good. Minestrone soup (£3.50 from the main, very extensive, menu) and a small portion of penne pasta with pancetta, spicy sausage and oodles of garlic (£3.50) were very hot which helped to take the chill off proceedings.

The soup was a veritable pot-pourri of fresh vegetables which had retained their separate identity and taste.

The pasta was truly al dente, which is not, surprisingly, always the case in Italian establishments and complemented by the slight crunchiness of the bacon and spicy sausage sauce.

If only the same technique had been brought to bear on our main courses. The fillet steak and the piece of chicken were perfectly acceptable pieces of meat but sadly ruined by their accompanying sauces.

The steak, which was almost rare rather than the medium as ordered, was drowned in what the menu described as a mushroom, onion and Barolo sauce(£15.95). Barolo is a fine deep red wine, arguably one of Italy's best, but there was very little of it in the sauce, which should have been muscular as Mike Tyson but had all the force and impact of that funny little man who advertises those sink-cleaning products on the television.

The cream, garlic, white wine and rosemary sauce which accompanied the chicken(£9.95) was similarly bland and glutinous. Both, horror of horrors, appeared to have been made with cornflour or some sort of proprietory thickening agent or cook-in sauce.

I finished with an Amaretto Parfait, a ice cream and biscuit confection which was rather spoilt by the lumps of squirty UHT cream which came with it.

On the plus side, the coffees were excellent, as was the half-bottle of house red, a very good Montepulciano for £5.50. Looking around us at what other diners were eating, we noted a particularly appetising plate-full of anti-pasta and some good-looking pizzas. Perhaps we got our choices wrong.

Latino's would be excellent for a quick bite of pasta or pizza at lunchtime. Unfortunately, it is only open in the evenings.

The bill came to just over £50, with a large part of that made up of the disappointing main courses. If we'd called it quits after the starters it would have been good value.