Grape expectations
RESTAURANT OF THE WEEK ENOTECO TURI
moved from Putney to Pimlico Road. It was hearing about the arrival of chef Francesco Sodano, also originally hailing from Naples with experience in various eminent restaurants in Rome, that made me visit — that and remembrance of good times past with Giuseppe Turi’s deep-rooted Italian wine list — here is an enoteca not a trattoria.
It occupies an address that was previously Tinello and, before that, L’Incontro. What were bare brick walls are now painted pale gold, a move that might be construed as a softening up for prices where “secondi piatti” (main courses) range betweenen £25.50 and £29.50 with vegetable side dishes extra. There is no
Meeting a sonsie friend at Bloomsbury y Club Bar in the eponymous hotel, wee ballast our martinis with quail Scotch eggs.
The camaraderie of catering is in full voice at Chess Club in Mayfair, where Jackson Boxer will run the music, which I like, but my young friend says he needs a soundtrack to muffle the details of the property acquisitions coming from the man in red trousers sitting on his right.
Veneration of regionality is conveyed morem legibly by areas — Pu Puglia, Piedmont, Lazio, Ca Campania, Veneto etc — be being given in brackets
Freshness is promisedpromi and delivered by Kheera Kitchen at Café from Crisis in Spitalfields. Good works, good food — especially aloo tikki, pictured, and cardamom chicken — mild prices, mild spices, sweet service. Hurry along. after every dish than by the cooking which fastidiously distances itself far, far away from where nearly 60 years ago two former waiters understood the gastronomic Italian soul to reside.
Baked artichokes with spelt wheat, Pecorino sauce, parsley reduction and grated marinated egg yolk (Lazio, apparently) are spindly branches needing more thump from the Pecorino sauce and more texture contrast between vegetable stalks and wheat berries. Marinated rabbit, seemingly bludgeoned into submission by the process, comes with “organic English ricotta” — I wonder if the Italians have their own version of Stilton? — red chicory and a blob of black garlic purée.
In the main course oxtail has been unwisely prised from its bones and is zapped by an over-reduced and thus over-salted sauce. But the pasta course we choose to share — cheese and black pepper (cacio e pepe) tortelli with parsnip purée and diced, seared cuttlefish — is masterful, delicately balanced, delectable.
Another treat is setteveli (seven veils), a layered confection of chocolate and hazelnut heaven served with olive oil ice cream. Apparently it is a tribute to the winning dessert in a 1997 World Pastry Championship held in France. And then there are the wines. A dish of pasta, an indulgence of dessert, a glass or three of wine; that would be my approach to Enoteca Turi.
By chance this was a week of several Italian meals. Jason Atherton has turned his attention to the cuisine in the opening of Hai Cenato? (meaning Have you had dinner?) in Victoria’s Nova complex. Coretti — pasta discs — with aged beef Bolognese, tomato, sage-burnt butter and Berkswell cheese, is a standout assembly from a collaborator in the business, chef Paul Hood.
Assagi in Notting Hill has re-opened with the ground floor given over to a bar and pizzeria. The dough of the Margherita is irreproachable, the tomato sauce suitably reticent. Do as the Romans do has been advice well observed at Stevie Parle’s Palatino in Clerkenwell, but more of that another day.
Were Mario and Franco still with us they’d be interested and astounded. Happily, Enzo Apicella, the 94-year-old designer who set the scene for the timeless trattoria, is alive and Instagramming — viciapicella — wicked political cartoons. I bet Len Deighton likes them.
@Fay_Maschler