Pricey as hell but boy it is breathtaking
I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see it get a star before too long
Lita 7-9 Paddington Street, W1U 5QH. Meal for two plus drinks about £260. Open Monday from 5.30pm-9.45pm, Tuesday to Saturday from noon-2.30pm and Sunday from noon-4pm. litamarylebone.com ★★★★★
HOW do I politely explain that Lita, a glossy new spot in Marylebone, initially struck me as tremendously boring? Because here, after all, was the non-novelty of another “live fire” restaurant, a “neighbourhood bistro” and what feels like the city’s kajillionth venture broadly steeped in the cuisine of southern Europe. As a grab-bag of influences and touchstones in a hospitality landscape notably low on originality, it all seemed indistinct enough to have practically been produced by algorithm. And so I did the thing that I always do. Which is to say, I groaned wearily and resolved to ignore it.
You can sense where this is heading can’t you? One of the constants of this job, alongside the indigestion and the intractable weight gain, is that it keeps on acquainting you with all the new ways your hasty opinions can be thuddingly incorrect. So, having been reeled in by a growing number of rapt notices on my Instagram, I now know that my initial read on Lita could hardly have been wider of the mark. Yes, it orients itself around gutsy Mediterranean holiday food. Yes, quite a few dishes are drawn from the roaring heat of the open kitchen’s requisite brick oven. But Irish head chef Luke Ahearne’s cooking possesses a vigour, acuity and imaginative thrust that is nothing short of staggering. Lita (a pet form of abuelita, the Spanish word for grandmother) is genuinely breathtaking both in technique and, as we’ll come to, price. It’s an impeccably crafted, legitimate contender for launch of the year. If the tyre-kickers at Michelin have anything about them then I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see it get a star before too long. Settled in the sprawled luxuriousness of its timber-beamed, 80-cover space, our on-ramp to the unusually long menu was pan con tomate: crisped little loofahs of toast, heaped with a beautifully bright, ripe rush of purest, oil-drizzled summer. Chopped dexter beef, startled by a renegade hit of Amalfi lemon and clumped beside shoestring fries that were like God’s own Chipsticks, was somehow even more thrilling. And then, by the time we took delivery of a plate of Dorset clams and plump, succulent artichokes, cloaked in a chilli-flecked, poised marvel of a butter sauce, the two of us at the table couldn’t quite believe what was happening. “That sauce,” said my pal Richard, as we both went greedily back for more of a mottled, ambrosial puddle of jus gras and wild garlic, below morels, St George mushrooms and a translucent scrim of lardo. “It’s like chocolate.”
The sauces at Lita could warrant a separate, subscription-only column of NSFW content. They are precise and sensitively conjured (a rich, mirrored gloss beneath burnt pear, duck hearts and sticky, gnawable pieces of Norfolk quail; the reduced bouillabaisse embroidering an exquisite piece of grilled, bone-in monkfish) yet ring with fathomless, shifting complexities. Their punctuating presence is the giveaway that Ahearne — who has worked at both Luca and Corrigan’s Mayfair — is operating in a classicist mode that’s more readily associated with tasting menus, handbag pedestals and scrupulous crumb-scraping.
Of course, this hints at the vertiginous lunacy of a bill that, especially with wines that start at £54 a bottle, will likely make you wince. It is difficult to wholly justify. Yet there is supposedly an entry-level set menu on the way. And it feels, really, like another instance of Lita being slightly mis-sold as everyday when it is outrageously elevated, unapologetically big ticket and decidedly special occasion. Furthermore, I can’t pretend I wouldn’t have happily paid double for the two puddings — a weightless Mayan Red chocolate ganache with coffee, popcorn ice cream and salted caramel, plus a fennel-crumbed spin on a lemon meringue pie — that are easily the best I’ve had in months.
Each was a surging pleasure-bomb; judderingly cold foam receding to luscious chew, crunch and finely calibrated contrasts of temperature as well as texture. I ate the last scraps with a side order of my own dismissive snap-judgments. Lita is a marvel; a fearsomely skilled wolf in grandmother’s garb. And I don’t think I have ever been happier for my gut instinct to have been so completely wrong.