Bocca di Lupo

For too long now London (and everywhere else) has been adrift in a sea of uninspiring Italian chain restaurants, but over the last couple of years a few small islands of imaginative, authentic food have appeared and all of a sudden we are spoiled for choice!

These days you can barely move in Soho without tripping over a Russel Normal restaurant - Polpo, Polpetto and Spuntino have set many mouths a-slobber in Soho lately and 'Da Polpo', soon to open in Covent Garden, is likely to be just as excellent.  Thanks to people like him and Jordan Frieda & Tim Siadatan of Trullo, Islington we finally have somewhere to shelter from the abject mediocrity offered by Gondola Holdings and Tragus Group (responsible, between them, for the ubiquitous Pizza Express, Ask, Zizzi, Bella Italia and Strada).

Bocca di Lupo, hiding away on a Soho side-street, is another such Italian eatery that has been attracting rhapsodic reviews since it opened a couple of years ago.  A friend and I decided to go and see what the fuss was about.

The trip to Bocca was a little impromptu and I left it until the morning of the visit to call and book a table - stupidly thinking 'It's a Wednesday lunchtime… how busy can it be?'.  Very busy, apparently.  The only two spaces left were at the bar, but despite being a little short on elbow room, we got a view of the kitchen and could see many of the dishes being prepared right in front of us.  Our fellow diners were a mix of business suits and trendy Sohoites and our waiter was very cheery and helpful.  Bright green olives, excellent focaccia and olive oil appeared quickly and we set about dissecting the menu.

And what an exciting menu it was!  Not only because of the mouthwatering, and often intriguing dishes on offer but also the fact that nearly all of them could be ordered as either small or large portions; meaning than almost any combination of starter and main was possible.  Why don't more restaurants do this?  Seriously!  Another nice touch was that each dish was labelled according to the region of Italy it comes from - just in case you fancy an entirely Ligurian lunch or Sicilian supper.

Neil and I decided on the same starter - Lamb proscuitto, raw broad beans and pecorino fresco.  The ham was sliced in front of us on a beautiful hand-cranked meat slicer and presented on a board with beans in their pods and 2 generous slices of young pecorino.  The colours were striking and the combination of salty ham, savoury cheese and fresh, slightly bitter beans was simple and perfect.

My pansotti filled with nettle and borage were silky and light but the deliciously rich, coarse walnut pesto they were smothered in made them surprisingly filling.  Neil's spider crab linguine was initially described as 'awesome' but on reflection he decided it was a little short on actual crab.

After my pasta and the very generous portion of spinach I ordered to go with it, I was pretty replete but my love for Italian desserts won over and I ordered the blood orange granita.  It appeared, a murderous shade of deep red, with a sprinkling of toasted almond flakes and chopped mint and after the first crunchy, juicy mouthful I was rendered instantly speechless.  It was at once rich and refreshing, the tart orange offset buy the toasty nuts and cool mint.  Once I had finished it and drained the last precious drops of sanguinous juice from the glass I recovered the powers of speech and then refused to shut up about how good it was for the rest of the day.

My friend's combination of 3 white gelati - yoghurt, coconut and ricotta-sour cherry - disappeared in seconds; before my camera (or spoon) got anywhere near them. They left a big grin on his face.

As we were en route to a wine tasting, we eschewed booze and coffee and drank only tap water; even so the meal was not exactly cheap.  But the food brought such pleasure, the ingredients were clearly top-notch and the service was great - so we could hardly grumble.  3 courses for 2 people including service came to about £85.

I should mention, that there was a lunch menu of 'one-dish meals' available as well - all of which sounded just as tasty.

Bocca di Lupo seems to me to occupy a clever middle-ground between such places as Polpetto (equally gorgeous food, but more casual and rustic and less expensive) and the more polished and pricey big-guns like Locanda Locatelli, Murano and The River Café.  I will certainly be back to sample the sections of the menu that we left untouched - the roasted and fried things all sounded interesting in particular.
I may even drop in from time to time just to get another hit of that narcotic granita!  

Bocca di Lupo

12, Archer Street

London

W1 7BB

9/10

££-£££ (depending on whether you are snacking or filling up)

St. John vs. Polpetto

For those of you who are already thinking that this is an odd, or even ridiculous comparison to be making, please bear with me – I hope my point will be made!

Also, my apologies for lack of decent pics - my camera was stolen before I had chance to upload them!!

St. John in Smithfield is nothing if not controversial.  Its champions talk of food free from frippery and the devotion to forgotten meat cuts, ‘nose-to-tail’ and such like.  It has, after all, featured on the ‘Top 50 Restaurants in the World’ list for a while, has held on to a Michelin star for 2 years and boasts a list of celebrity foodies and chefs who rave about it.

However, its critics are less satisfied with the pared-down approach to dining and question whether St. John really has a place in the constellation of london Michelin restaurants.

Having read mixed reviews (e.g. here, here  and here) a friend and I decided to see for ourselves.

The restaurant finds itself in a refurbished smokehouse in Clerkenwell – it has deliberately been kept minimal: open plan, bare walls, no art, paper tablecloths etc.  It really is the antithesis to the usual Michelin glamour.  The antidote, some would say.

The service was friendly and casual (the first time I’ve ever been served by a waiter in a blood-stained apron!) and the menu was full of intriguing things.  To start I ordered a warm octopus and potato salad.  It was everything octopus should be and so frequently isn’t; meaty and toothsome without being chewy or slimy and the dressing was a savoury, tangy delight.  The pig skin salad sitting opposite me was a generous pile of crunchy, deeply porky crackling shards and nicely dressed watercress.  My friend reported goosebumps after the 1^st mouthful.  The portions were ample, but boths dishes were pretty much dumped on the plates.

When ordering our main courses we had differing approaches: I wanted to try something completely new to me and he wanted to see how well St. John could prepare a simple, standard dish.  To that end I had the poached lambs’ tongues and he the roast duck breast.  The tongues were a revelation; succulent, soft and salty with a deep lamby flavour – not as ‘offally’ as I had expected.  They were paired with crunchy shavings of blanched carrot, whole radishes, some rocket leaves and white beans.  I ordered some boiled new potatoes as well and these were genuinely the most delicious I have ever eaten – with the fantastic deep, buttery flavour that I have only ever found in roast spuds before.  Sadly, my fellow foodie’s experience was not as good.  His duck was fairly moist and pink, but surprisingly flavourless – actually pretty bland.  The skin, though browned, was soft and devoid of the savoury intensity and crispiness that good roast duck should have (I am pretty sure it was cooked sous-vide).  It was accompanied by a lone braised turnip; halved and with a slightly tough skin and a splash of thin pan juices from the duck.  The dish was pretty charmless and left him sorely underwhelmed.  It was not poorly cooked per se, at least not enough to be returned to the kitchen, but both of us felt we had cooked better at home: not something you would expect from a restaurant in this league.

We decided against puddings (Paul A. Young chocolates is walking distance from the restaurant and we wanted to save room!) and left St. John with mixed feelings.

2 courses and a glass of wine each, potatoes and a side salad came to £76 including service.

On reflection, I feel that St. John is a good place to go to try well-cooked examples of the less frequently used parts of the beast.  Next time I feel an offal craving, I will be back to see what their ever-changing menu has to challenge my tastebuds.  However, I find their deliberately spartan, no-frills mess hall ethos to be oddly more pretentious than most of the restaurants they are trying to set themselves apart from.  If meat is to be unadorned and cooked simply, then it must be nothing short of excellent.  If a duck breast is the only thing sitting on a plate costing close to £20, then it should be the paragon to all duck breasts, not a lament to the misuse of a waterbath.  I do not think that a Michelin inspector eating the same meal would have allowed them to keep their controversial star.  

After our lunch in Smithfield and a wander around Islington and Soho, we decided to see if we could find a more inspiring, better value meal to put the smiles back on our faces.  I am yet to read a single bad word about Polpetto, so figured this would be a good bet.

We were not entirely sure we were in the right place as we wandered up the unassuming staircase by The French House pub on Dean St.  However, at the top, we were greeted warmly and shown to a small table somewhat wedged in between others.  The 28 cover restaurant is crammed into a single room above the pub but, at 6.45, when we arrived, it was already pretty busy and the atmosphere was palpably alive.

We ordered an Aperol spritz each while we perused the menu.  It quickly became clear that we both wanted to order the entire menu and it took a lot of discussion and willpower before we had whittled it down to a mere 6 dishes to share.

The 1^st to arrive was a carpaccio of swordfish adorned with pink peppercorns and dill.  The plate was tiny, but the flavours huge –grins were instantly restored to our faces and our mouths were left watering for the following dishes.  Next came a pizzeta with cured pork shoulder and pickled peppers – as thin and crispy as any I have ever had and incredibly moreish, and a bruschetta of ricotta, grilled fennel and prosciuto.  The fennel was wafer thin and char-striped; its cool, smoky slipperiness complimenting the salty ham perfectly.  Warm lentils with creamy burrata and heady basil oil were hungrily demolished.  Borlotti beans with wild garlic and rosemary crumbs were good, but I would have liked to have seen more of the wild garlic; it was a little lost amongst the beans.  Finally the braised ox cheek on white polenta arrived.  The cheek was so tender that we could literally eat it with spoons, the flavour was deeply beefy accented with slivers of olive and some melt-in-the-mouth cherry tomatoes.  The polenta was very soft – wetter than I am used to, but silky and lovely nonetheless.

My dessert was a small, dense polenta cake doused liberally with an orange and campari syrup and a splodge of yoghurt icecream. Pleasingly tart, slightly bitter and very moreish.  My friend’s flourless chocolate and walnut cake was a little dry and crumbly and rather heavy – but tasty.

2 spritzers, 6 sharing dishes, 2 puds and service came to £69.  We waddled back down the stairs feeling fat and happy and vowing to return soon to try the rest of the menu.  The only thing which spoilt an otherwise excellent evening was the fact that our table was very close to the adjacent one, which belonged to the most irritating diners I have ever come across – they were shouting, or rather bellowing conversation at each other across the table, on topics ranging from better restaurants they’d eaten in to French prostitutes, all the time swearing, guffawing and gesticulating wildly – it was almost impossible to keep my own thread of conversation going and I struggled not to butt in and ask them to pipe down a bit!  Space is at a premium in Soho and I don’t begrudge Polpetto trying to squeeze as many tables into their outstanding little eatery as possible – we were just unlucky, I guess, with our neighbours!

You might wonder why I am comparing these two restaurants.  It's not just that I ate at them both in 1 day, but rather that I think they share similar ideals – unpretentious, honest grub, celebrating the ingredients rather than aesthetics and high concept.  One may be rooted in traditional/historical English cuisine and the other in vibrant Italian fare but they are not that different in essence.

However I feel that, where Polpetto wins, St. John fails.  Polpetto do their best to excite and titilate you in a buzzing, friendly environment, whereas eating at St. John you feel as if you are being challenged to appreciate their food.  It is as though they are picking a fight; inviting and relishing the controversy, daring you to disagree.  This, to my mind, detracts from the experience.

St. John Bar and Restaurant

26 St. John St,

London

EC1M 4AY

6/10
£££  X

~~~~~~~~

Polpetto

Upstairs at The French House

49 Dean St,

London.

W1D 5BG
9/10
££-£££  ***