EATING OUT

Rainy West London yields to sunny southern Europe in a new Italian that warms Tom’s cockles

The Spaghetti House was, along with the likes of La Terrazza, Tiberio and Alvaro’s, one of the first proper Italian restaurants to open in late 1950s and early 60s London. Before that, the choice was between heavily Frenchified ‘mock Italians’ like Quo Vadis or the downright ridiculous ‘Hollywood Roman’ places where waiters wore togas and stick-on beards and food was served on wooden platters. But while the others have long closed their doors, The Spaghetti House marches on, with nine branches scattered across London. They may not be the very finest Italian restaurants in London, but you have to admire their stamina.

A Braccetto is the newest addition to the family: a ‘modern Italian trattoria’ in Earl’s Court. And on a dismally damp spring evening it offers welcome relief from the soggy gloom. Light, bright and warm, there are marble-topped tables, whitewashed brick walls and splashes of Mediterranean azure. Service is as sunny as an Amalfi Coast afternoon and the menu is short and to the point, mainly pasta and Roman-style pizzas with a few antipasti and mains.

As bad Italian pop (is there any other kind?) dribbles from the

With splashes of Mediterranean azure, it’s warm, light and bright

speakers, we eat good bresaola, salame and speck, as well as ‘anchovies & butter’. The quality of the preserved fish is fine, but the portions are rather mean – one lonely fillet per finger of toast.

Hey ho. Swerving the awful sounding ‘penne vodka & salmone’ (salmon has no place in any pasta. Ever), I eat carbonara, the eggs and cheese clinging

tenaciously to the beautifully cooked bucatini. OK, so the guanciale could be a little more crisp, but it soothes and satisfies in the way good carbonara should.

The pizza is decent, with a thin, crisp, slightly chewy crust. My daughter Lola insists on ordering the Piccante, which would be fine were it not for the extraneous lemon peel and rocket. She spends the next five minutes picking the offending items off. But the tomato sauce melds the sweet and the sharp, and the

cheese melts in small molten pools. A Braccetto won’t blow your mind, but on a truly miserable night it offers the comfort and succour of a decent neighbourhood restaurant.

And that, in these fraught times, is sometimes exactly what il dottore ordered.

About £25 per head. A Braccetto, 242 Earls Court Road, London SW5; a-braccetto.com

‘The pizza is decent,’ says Tom, ‘with a thin, crisp, slightly chewy crust’