Little Sicily is a new trattoria in Chipping Norton with a simple ethos.

"It's meant to be a home-from-home, like popping round to mine for dinner.

"I mean, you wouldn't have menus if you came to my house for supper, would you?" Sebastian Genovese asked, as we sat in the tiny white-washed interior, which was, until December, a tearoom.

But then you wouldn't charge your mates £11 for a pizza either, would you, or £10.95 for an Italian pancake baked in the oven?

You would, on the other hand, sell your wife for a piece of the chocolate cake Sebastian produced at the end of the meal to mark my son's birthday, so the evening eventually evened itself out.

Little Sicily is simplicity itself.

Apart from only seating 22 and the menus being replaced by blackboards, the red and white chequered tablecloths complete the décor.

A wooden screen hides the kitchen from customers' eyes, and you expect a decorator to appear at any moment to complete those finishing touches.

Instead Sebastian arrives.

He takes the orders and then cooks them, preferring to meet his customers face-to-face before charging them the earth, so that he can explain the Sicilian specialties and cook them to order.

One of our pizzas was therefore cooked without cheese, as was a meat crespolini - children can be very specific when they want to be.

The service is certainly haphazard, but again covered by the trattoria mantle - you wouldn't send back a bitter hot chocolate if you'd popped round for supper would you, or ask him to hurry up with those cokes...

WHAT DID YOU HAVE?

First up, we ordered some garlic bread, which Sebastian replaced with his own bruschetta version. We were expecting hunks of crispy Italian ciabatta oozing with butter and garlic, but instead got a rather under-cooked pizza base with tomato sauce and pesto on it. Next was spaghetti bolognaise, three crespolinis (one vegetable, two meat), and two pizzas.

WHAT DID YOU THINK?

The Gino pizza came with mussels and prawns and was a stunning £11. For that kind of money it needs to be the best pizza you've ever eaten. But as the wood-burning pizza oven isn't being built till the summer, we had the non wood-burning pizza oven version, which was very average.

The crespolinis were delicious, however, although the vegetarian version came stuffed with alarmingly big pieces of cauliflower. But again, they were too expensive - £7.95 would have been about right, but £10.50 was pushing it!

After all, they were average sized and didn't come with any extras or vegetables/salad. The £10.50 spaghetti was nice enough but not mind-blowing, even though the pasta is all hand-made at Little Sicily.

SAVED BY THE BELL: But then the home-made cake arrived and saved the day. I can still taste it now.

Topped with freshly made profiteroles oozing with local cream, the cake itself was moist, chocolately, moreish and had us all in raptures.

It was one of the nicest cakes I have ever eaten.

VERDICT: Overall, I would say Little Sicily is charming but overpriced. Personally, I shall only be returning to gorge myself on Sebastian's cake selection, unless you beat me to it.