Angela Hartnett’s favourite dishes from her Michelin-starred menu
Angela Hartnett is ready to welcome back customers with a fresh take on spring dining, and shares her signature dishes and new creations
Finally, after more than three months of lockdown, I’ll be opening the doors of two of my restaurants tomorrow: Cafe Murano in Bermondsey and St James’s in central London. Despite working at the restaurants throughout lockdown, preparing our restaurant boxes and seeing customers coming to collect them, I still can’t wait to see the first customer take their seat and browse the menu.
We’ve been working on a gorgeous spring menu at Cafe Murano all these months, and today I’m sharing a couple of those dishes, alongside some classics that appear on the menus regularly. The cacio e pepe is one of the latter, a beautifully simple dish that we first served when we opened my Bermondsey restaurant. Serve alongside a salad if you like, but I prefer it as is, for a comforting supper or weekend lunch.
The crab linguine is, similarly, a timeless classic, and appears yearly in all my
restaurants. We came up with the pickled vegetable dish this year and loved it – the sharp, crunchy vegetables alongside a silky aubergine purée. We’ll be serving it as a starter, with carta di musica bread for dipping. It’s a great one to share and nibble on with a glass of wine.
Cuttlefish is something we should use more of in this country; it’s delicious, and there’s no need to shy away from it. Ask your fishmonger to clean it for you, and treat it like any other piece of fish. We usually serve it with tomato, but since peas are in season, it makes sense to use them, and bacon is a natural companion for both. Now, of course, I just need to pray for some good weather, though I’m sure a chill in the air won’t dampen the spirits of the British public, – not when there’s a plate of something delicious at stake. Good luck to all the restaurants, pubs and cafés with their opening on Monday!