"Italians in Mayfair are like fried chicken shops - there's one on every street, and locals visit them when they lack the imagination to go anywhere else. The opening of a new one, then, shouldn't create too much excitement, but on paper this one's a bit different: the chef is from Japan. [...]
The pan-Italian menu read beautifully in its simplicity. The best dishes we tried were from the cicchetti (small plates) section, including crostini di N'duja, with chilli-laced Calabrian pork sausage; and a crostini di lardo, draped with a chiffon-thin slice of seasoned fat that merely whispered of its porcine origin before melting on the tongue. A main of sea bream with caponata was that and no more - a simple, warm Sicilian salad of aubergine and tomato with a perfectly crisped piece of fish. [...] We looked at descriptions of other dishes with envy - quail salad, dandelion and pancetta, listed under antipasti, and venison carpaccio with pickled summer vegetables caught the eye.
The pan-Italian menu read beautifully in its simplicity. The best dishes we tried were from the cicchetti (small plates) section, including crostini di N'duja, with chilli-laced Calabrian pork sausage; and a crostini di lardo, draped with a chiffon-thin slice of seasoned fat that merely whispered of its porcine origin before melting on the tongue. A main of sea bream with caponata was that and no more - a simple, warm Sicilian salad of aubergine and tomato with a perfectly crisped piece of fish. [...] We looked at descriptions of other dishes with envy - quail salad, dandelion and pancetta, listed under antipasti, and venison carpaccio with pickled summer vegetables caught the eye.
