EVER since I moved to Swindon I’d been looking for the perfect restaurant to win over the ultimate and harshest food critic – my mum.

Tucked away on Old Town’s high street, Il Capricorno ristorante and pizzeria which touts itself as the finest Italian food in Wiltshire, certainly came with a large amount of promise.

The restaurant which opened 17 years ago is now a firm fixture of the town’s Italian community.

Location wise, it couldn’t be better, nestled in the heart of a busy thoroughfare, perhaps too well as I’d walked past several times and never noticed it.

As soon as we walked in it felt like we’d stepped back in time to a traditional 1970s Italian trattoria complete with terracotta velvet booths, oil paintings, and the staple of every family run establishment – a staff photo above the door.

Every detail from the table decorations down to the waiter Davide had been flown in from Italy giving Il Capricorno an authentic, warm and rustic Italian feel.

In fact, if you didn’t look out of the window and see Old Town Kebab House and a hairdressing academy you could imagine yourself transported across the Mediterranean to the land of pizza and pasta.

The silken and passionate notes of Italy’s finest, classical tenor Andrea Bocelli serenaded us as we walked across stone floors to sit down at our candlelit window table.

On that Thursday evening we were the only table in the restaurant.

For starters we opted for gamborini; king prawns cooked in their shells in a lemon, garlic butter, white wine, paprika and herb sauce, a classic antipasto of mixed meats, cheese and olives and a guilty pleasure of cheesy garlic bread .

The gamborini was one of the pricier items on the list of starters at £7.95 but it was worth every penny. Perfectly cooked prawns swam in a vibrant sauce which was both zesty and infused with fresh herbs, leaving my mum in culinary raptures.

The garlic bread (£2.95) arrived hot and crispy with fresh garlic studding the oozing buttery surface coupled with just the right amount of gooey mozzarella. It was a definite highlight and we both agreed it was the best garlic bread we’d tasted outside of Italy.

Rounding off the trio of starters was the humongous antipasto, the fresh buffalo mozzarella and sundried tomatoes left you wanting more and for £6.95, it was a bargain.

First obstacle overcome, mum was impressed. The supporting cast had been strong but the headliner still had to make an impression.

For mains we had ordered Linguine scoglio, traditional pasta with seafood and a healthy dose of garlic, white wine and parsley A self-admitted spiceaholic I went for the Pizza Sfizosa, tomato sauce with mozzarella, hot salami and n’duja sausage with extra green olives (10.95) As I took my first bite my mum tentatively asked the killer question, is it better than Pizza Express?

My response was one of incredulity; the pizza was mouth-wateringly crisp with a smooth yet fiery and intriguing n'duja sausage paste giving the pizza a fabulous lift-off.

Pizza Express was left far behind in Il Capricorno’s dust.

The linguine was dressed in a fragrant, rich and garlic infused sauce. Filled with the bounty of the ocean, the dish was packed full of perfectly cooked seafood including squid, prawns and mussels, and at £8.95 left a sweeter taste in the wallet.

Needless to say, the plates were wiped clean and the mother was left looking like the Cheshire cat from Alice in Wonderland. Mission accomplished.

There were one or two areas which needed improvement however, the service was slightly clunky with my mum’s best attempts at conversation with the waitress given a lukewarm response.

A slightly bizarre portfolio of tracks accompanied dinner starting with opera before moving to something that sounded like it was recorded in a crypt. It was music not muzak, with a generous pinch of Italian flair.

We also waited more than 20 minutes for the starters. Given that we were the only table in for the majority of the evening and one of the starters was cold we felt that service could have been slightly speedier.

Indeed when I called asking for photos to go with this review a waitress informed me that the boss may shout at me which again was very odd.

With three starters and two mains coming in at £38 the food was fairly reasonable. However with the cheapest bottle of white wine at £14.95, the price of dinner for two could quickly escalate.

Finishing the meal with complimentary palate cleansing shots of Limoncello the spell may have been broken as we stepped outside but, with a Starsky and Hutch style beat rounding off the evening we departed confident we had found a taste of Sicily in Swindon.