Greek in Exmouth Market

 I haven't been to a Greek restaurant for quite a long  time, so I was intrigued to read a review of one by Jay Rayner  and when looking for somewhere to go with S&L we decided this was worth a try. The first challenge was booking a table, because Attica doesn't appear to have a website. Tip: the telephone number for its previous incarnation, Kolossi, still works.

Second, it's quite a long way from the nearest tube station. So we arranged to meet at The Eagle on Farringdon Road, part-way there. This has a well-established reputation for its food, but no-one mentioned that this means that the chef will be chopping herbs at the bar so vigorously that you couldn't hear yourself think. Combined with some loud punters and hard surfaces, this made conversation rather challenging. 

We've booked quite early - 7pm - but the restaurant is already fairly full, and soon they are turning people away. It's quite a small place, brightly done out in white and blue. The menu and wine list are both quite short - we do get an SB for £27. There are some mezze options, but we all choose  individually. From the "while you wait" section we order hummus, tsatsiki and tarama with flat bread, though this takes a while to arrive. 

Our starters arrive before we finish the dips. S chose the halloumi, and L the giant beans (gigantes), while our choice is calamari. The halloumi is very good, the beans interesting and the calamari fine, hot and not rubbery. And again our mains arrive before we have completely finished this course, so we're feeling a bit rushed. 

B and S both have the king prawn souvlaki, I have lamb souvlaki and L octopus. They are all good sized portions. My lamb is very tasty, not over-cooked, though the prawns look a little dry. 

We don't have dessert, and just two bottles of wine. That brings the bill to £188 without service, which seems about right. The service has been fine (apart from rushed) and the music (if there was any) is subdued, and not overly Greek. But overall, the feeling was a bit "meh". If it were at the end of your road, then you'd probably make a few visits, but it didn't seem worth the effort of crossing town for.  

Rugby weekend in Cardiff

 A guest posting from a regular reader. The contributor's views on the rugby are his own and not necessarily endorsed by Chompers..

My son PS and I are in Cardiff for the Wales v England 2023 Home International.  We have booked dinner at Asador 44 Spanish Grill and wine bar located near the Millennium Stadium.

It's the evening before the game and the restaurant district is buzzing.  We receive a warm welcome and are guided  towards the rear of the restaurant.  Decor is very pleasant and in keeping with a bistro atmosphere

We study the menu - it’s not that extensive possibly as its rugby International weekend but it looks good, although the cost could easily run away.  

Two toro blancos wet our appetites, followed by starters of salchichon iberico ham £7.50 and salmon £9. Both tasty although the ham is round slices and somewhat understated.  It should be round - just that I was expecting something different!

We decide on the aged Pembrokeshire sirloin steak sharing platter at £65.  Celeriac, fries and a beef and rioja sauce accompany.  Rather than a whole bottle, we choose 2 glasses of decent red at £12ea. It's a long weekend! The aged steak about nine 1/4" slices in total is cooked crisp on outside and rare inside. It is deliciously tasty and beautifully tender.  The sauce adds more flavour. Overall the best steak I've had for some time.  The red wine milu roble ribera del duero is excellent.

We opt for sweets: crema catalana, a  Spanish version of creme brulee at £16 accompanied by 2 glasses of Micaela cream desert wine at £10.

The total bill with service  comes to £170. All in all an excellent meal with good attentive service. We recommend Asador for lunch or evenings.

Park House Restaurant and Wine Bar (website unavailable)

 It's Saturday evening and we've just finished watching England beat Wales at the Principality Stadium Cardiff.  Dinner has been booked at the Park House, that purports to be a fine dining restaurant. 

It's a little jaunt from the city centre but not too far away.  On arrival we see what it was in its day: probably a large mansion style  house or more likely hotel.  

We ring the bell at what appears to be the main entrance to the side wondering what's inside.  Decor is very much like a gothic mansion with lots of oak panelling. Hushed silence seems to be the watchword. The atmosphere reminds me of the reading room in a gentlemen’s club.

We are shown upstairs to a large dining room with circular tables.  We are early but note that only one other table in the room is occupied.  Our big round table could seat 6 or more but there's just 2 of us.

The principal waiter appears, welcomes us and talks us through the menu options.  We were considering the 9 course taster but learn that it's not available as a large party upstairs is having it. 

That leaves a 6 course taster or a la carte menu which looks a tad limited but includes several of the same dishes. So we both opt for the taster and wine flight.  We decline the more expensive flight for Icon wines priced at £59.

Service is brisk, delivered by two attentive but quiet waitresses, plus the main waiter who also acts as sommelier.  All very gentile and hushed.  Pin drops come to mind.

We order some sparkling English wine to kick off the evening.  Very nice. 2 x 200ml at £12 ea.

The first course, endive with apple celery walnut chutney duly arrives and our sommelier introduces and explains the first wine he has chosen - classic cuvee Nytimber Sussex.  It's a good match and we both enjoy the somewhat smallish glasses.  

Second course is confit dry aged Pembrokeshire pork belly with apple smoked eel and Lyonnaise onion.  Very tasty and generous but quite rich as it’s belly of pork.  Our wine is 2019 Old Vine Chenin Blanc Olifantsberg, Western Cape SA.  Again very pleasant.  With these flights you always want a second glass...

Third course in fairly quick succession is diver caught Orkney scallop with caper raisin cauliflower and vadouvan - delightful, and perfectly cooked.  Accompanying wine is Australian - 2021 Hen and chicken chardonnay, Larry Cherubino.  Excellent.

Fourth course arrives: dry aged Pembrokeshire beef.  It’s the highlight of the meal for me and deliciously tasty.  2019 Reserve Barossa Shiraz, Berton, Barossa Valley Australia.  An excellent match.  We had beef yesterday despite me thinking Wales is all about lamb!

At this stage there's an optional cheese tasting plate at £12 but we're beginning to sense the beckoning plimsoll line so we both decline.

Next up is the “boiled egg” - to be honest I forget what exactly this is  but recall it's sort of a chocolate fondant thing.

Finally we have Apple Sable Breton blackberry tart with a glass of 2015 Marsanne Cane Cut Tahbilk South Australia to cap it off.  It’s a classic French pudding. By this time we both feel well satisfied. 

The 6 course taster was £59 ea, the flight £35 ea. Plus a bottle of still water at £3.50.  With 12% service and £1.23 carbon free dining (??), the total comes to £243.67. 

For me quite an expensive meal but overall of very satisfying quality and delightful presentation, if not mind blowingly outstanding.  But at £59 for 6 courses very good vfm I think. Excellent service and a very attentive and friendly sommelier.  Nice to know what you're drinking and why. 

A nice round up to a great rugby weekend in Cardiff.

 

Return to No 97

In the year or so since we first went to No 97,  we have been back a couple of times, once in a group of 5 and once on Valentine's Day. Each time was good, but not special, with the emphasis seemingly on the presentation rather than the flavour. 

B decides we should go there again after the farmer's market, which goes on outside. She booked a table, but in fact there is plenty of room when arrive. Others do arrive later though. This time we are in the main restaurant on the ground floor, a nice enough room, but with rather strange plastic flowers over the bar ("counter"). 

As usual there is a limited choice of three options per course, one of which is vegetarian. After an amuse bouche of cod roe on crackers, B has the spiced gin cured salmon to start. This is quite a thick slab, more like sashimi. Typically beautiful, but very tasty indeed. My starter is lamb loin, half-a-dozen slices, with aubergine caviar. This is stunning. It is so tender and moist with really great flavour. Both dishes appeared to be small, but are so full of taste that we savour them and find they are plenty. The vegetarian starter was "virtual" ravioli - not sure what that was!

B's main was chicken breast, which I always think is a waste of a choice when eating out. This comes with a truffle "bitter ball", shredded chicken I think. Both elements are really good, the chicken also flavourful. My main is the sea bass, apparently with crab bouillabaisse, though I didn't notice that. "Saffron potatoes" turns out to be one delicate disc. At first I think the fish is more interesting than usual, but as I go on it seems rather too "fishy", not the delicate taste of sea bass you usually expect.  Again the presentation is delicate and wonderful.  We also have the lettuce, speck and boiled egg salad. This is quite a contrast. A big mass of leaves, meat and egg slapped together in a bowl with a heavy dressing. It looked like it had been prepared in a totally different kitchen. 

Dessert is either cheese for a supplement or a dark chocolate tart with popcorn and "Guinness", so we have one of those to share, with a "pop-tini" (vodka, coffee liqueur and popcorn syrup) to complement it. We just ordered one drink, thinking you would pour it over the tart, but the charming waiter insists on bringing us one each, in elegant glasses. It is a lovely, powerful drink. The tart itself looks fantastic with the popcorn on top, and is good bitter flavour, The "Guinness" is a small pot of chocolate mousse with cream on top. 

As I mentioned, the waiter has been very friendly, helpful and generous. The background music is quite low, late 60s classics with the occasional foray into early 70s. We had two bottles of their cheapest wine, a fruity Verdejo, at £28 each. Sparkling water is free. So at £27 for two courses and £32 for three, the bill comes to £140, good value, especially if like the table next to us you are Instagramming every dish. 

Three recent excursions

 We're meeting up with T&K again, and after some deliberation have settled on El Pirata Mayfair, off Piccadilly, near Shepherd Market. We'd been a couple of times before, but it seems we also went with them after a wine-tasting - which we have no recollection of!

It's very busy again, and I give my name for the booking - only for T to point out he booked it, so is described by the waiter as "the fantastic Mr S" - but we are lucky to be shown to a table by the window. Even downstairs is pretty full - it is very lively. We do manage to flag down a waiter to order some wine - B and I have an SB "Inurrieta Blanco" (£31) while they have a red Tarima Organico (£30). 

We explore the menu and eventually settle on nine dishes plus some bread. In the end, the chipironnes (grilled baby squid with chickpeas stew) is "off",  First to arrive was the plate of 8 anchovies - only T and I tuck into those,  These were soon followed by the two croquettes dishes - ham and chicken - and the asparagus. Croquettes are fine, if not special, but the asparagus with tomato and manchego is really nicely cooked al dente. Next were the mussels and chorizo (small pieces) and two portions of gambas pil-pil (inevitably). Both really good - nicely charred garlic with the pil-pil. Garlic chicken and chorizo in red wine round off the order. The chorizo is good, but the garlic chicken a little dull, in a rather dark sauce. 

After a little pause, we order some more gambas and a plate of cheese, and re-order the bread which hadn't arrived. There are four different cheeses in the selection and it comes with quince jelly and little breadsticks. The garlic dip with the bread is also good. With this we have a second bottle of the red. 

Service is the increasingly common 13.5%. But they didn't charge us for the bread. So we end up with a total of £216. The waiters have been jolly and service pretty good for such a busy lunchtime. Very good lunch.

After a shopping trip to Kingston we head to a Vietnamese restaurant B had spotted online - Pho. This is part of a chain, with a dozen or so in and around London and others across the country.  When we get there - about 2pm on a Saturday - the place is heaving and it's not clear that we'll get a table. As the waitress goes to look, a small group comes in behind us and asks if we have a reservation, as they do. Well, you'll still have to wait. 

We get a table towards the back of the restaurant, near the back window, so quite pleasant. It takes a little while to flag down a waitress to order wine, but it comes fairly quickly after that - a French Viognier at £22.50. There's a very interesting range of starters on the menu - we order the pork meatballs, seafood spring roll and mango salad. But the mango salad is "off" so we have crispy squid instead.  We also order prawn crackers to keep us going.

The meatballs are very tasty, with lemongrass, and the peanut sauce we choose to have with it has a subtle kick that creeps up on you. The squid, as is often the case, is good while still hot, but looses its appeal a bit after that. They are small pieces, nicely cooked in thin batter, not at all rubbery, though I would have preferred garlic in the mayonnaise rather than lime. The spring roll accompanied by Vietnamese fish sauce is the least interesting despite apparently having king prawn and crab in it. The crackers don't appear at first, then the waitress tells us that they were hunting the store-room for sweet chilli sauce to go with them. Shortly later, the chef comes to tell us and the lads at the table next to us that they didn't have the sauce, but offered us a choice of ones he could do. The others choose the sriracha one, so we go with that too. It is very spicy indeed. 

The main course menu is dominated - appropriately enough - by pho dishes, though there are a few stir fries and curries too. B chooses the house version with prawns, chicken and steak, while I go for the steak and garlic one.  They are big steaming bowls of broth with loads of noodles, plus herbs to add to taste, to be eaten messily with chopsticks and a bamboo spoon. Not one for a first date.  The broth is excellent, and there is plenty of protein in both, though a couple of the pieces of steak in mine are rather tough. Far too many noodles to stand a chance of getting through them. 

With a second bottle of wine the bill comes to a bit over £100, including 12.5% service. The service has been good despite the unavailability of a couple of things, so I'm happy to fill in the feedback questionnaire at the end. An interesting lunch.

The following week we visit the Cezanne exhibition at Tate Modern. We're quite late so our favourite tapas nearby isn't open and our researches have not been very successful at finding anywhere else interesting. We settle on The Refinery, round the back on Southwark Street. It's a big place, but not very full when we arrive - though the waiter says they were busy earlier and are fully booked this evening. A good place for work groups I'd imagine - they do lots of cocktails. The wine list is fairly varied, but we just order the South African Chenin Blanc at £24. 

B fancies the venison scotch egg, but they don't have that, so we have the salt and pepper squid and the chicken skewers instead. The squid comes as quite a large portion, with lemon mayonnaise this time but it is rather rubbery.  The skewers come with "hot honey" - with a chilli kick - interesting, but rather too sweet. 

Main courses are crispy duck salad for B and chalkstream trout for me plus a side order of "Roman" fries, with parmesan and truffle. The salad is quite large, with a good amount of duck and a wide range of supplements - beansprouts, wonton and peanuts. But it is more crispy than duck. My trout though is very good indeed. Slightly undercooked perhaps, but with a lovely crust and lots of flavour.   

The service has been good and the music I think you might call "technobeat" - not too loud, though I'd guess it would be louder in the evening. We have a nice table by the window, so the feel has been good. Sparkling water and a second bottle of wine, a 50p charity donation and 12.5% service brings the bill to over £120. Probably the least good value of the three, but a reasonable enough option in an area surprisingly short on mid-range places. 

A tapas and an English

 We're going over to Teddington, so I do some research on restaurants there.  The Wharf looks likes it would be nice, overlooking the river. But it's closed on a Tuesday when we will be there. After looking at a few others, I decide on Bar Estilo, a tapas place, because the menu is very extensive.  

We arrive around 2pm - they are open all afternoon, though it closes at 7pm - and there are quite a few people in there, considering it's early in the week. You enter through a pair of heavy curtains, perhaps more French in style, into a large room, with several sections to it, including an empty smarter looking area and a bar.  There's a lot of wrought iron around and the feel is Moorish rather than Spanish. That's reflected in several of the dishes - lamb kofte mezze, and pinchos (skewers) in Moorish spices. Music is mainly a mix of Latin and Spanish (Santana and Rodriguez). 

We're welcomed by a cheeky young waiter who pretends they are fully booked. He keeps up the chatter throughout - saying he couldn't get the duck wrap to rap, only sing. More serious staff are around too.  We order the white Rioja (£26) and some garlic bread with cheese and chorizo to keep us going while we decide what to have.  It's suggested that we between us we order 2 dishes from each of the veggie, meat and fish columns, though the paella at a neighbouring table looks good too. In the end we are a bit more modest.

The bread is lovely. The melted cheese has loads of garlic in it, and a slice of chorizo on top - I'd expected it just to be small pieces mixed in.   Chicken livers is a sizeable dish in a piri-piri sauce, which has a nicely judged kick - clearly there, but too dominant. It's not densely reduced in sherry like the one in Mar y Terra, so is lighter, but it works well. Three lamb skewers are well-cooked through, though the "Moorish spices" aren't very evident.  Prawns pil-pil - always ordered if on the menu - come piping hot and sizzling. Lots of chilli, and garlic slices cooked to brown. The duck wrap is the least impressive - 4 pieces, but not very well filled and a somewhat heavy wrap. The accompanying sweet chilli sauce, however, is not the anonymous gloop you often get, but a good strong hit. We also have a very nice rocket and manchego salad. 

For us, this was plenty, though several other dishes were tempting too.  With a second bottle and a modest 10% service, this comes to just over £100, very good value. Definitely one to consider if you are in the area.

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Meeting up with old friend D at Hampton Court, she has suggested the Mute Swan. next to The Mitre. We have been there some years before, eating downstairs in the bar, but this time we are shown up the iron spiral staircase to a largely empty upstairs dining room. This means we get a choice of tables so can choose one by the window, with something of a view of the Palace. 

More people do arrive later, but it never gets busy and by the time we leave we are almost the only ones still there.  The waiter is attentive - he has nothing else to do - so we get our wine, a £25 Chilean SB quickly. 

B naturally has to have the scallops. Four large ones came with an interesting, slightly spicy sauce and chorizo pieces, which she thought was excellent. D has the chicken liver pate with four thick slices of toast, one of which I happily helped out with to soak up the butter with my garlic and chilli king prawns. All three starters resulted in clear plates. 

For main course, D has the fishcakes - two solid looking pieces with a mound of rocket. B's hake wrapped in proscuitto  is a little dry she says, but a good flavour. My choice of a "light bite" crispy beef salad with cashews is perhaps predictably less successful. There is nothing really wrong with the beef, other than you can't taste much meat in the crispy covering. But the salad is a mass of white cabbage and carrots, pretty tasteless even with a sort of soy sauce dressing and the nuts. It is filling though. We have sides of truffle and parmesan fries - nothing like as good as the Ivy - and a rocket and tomato salad that we don't really need. 

We share a single waffle, caramelised banana and ice cream pudding between us. With three bottles of wine and some water that brings the bill to just over £200 for three of us, including again a modest 10% service. It's been nice enough and fair value, but not somewhere I'd make a beeline for.

Busy week!

Monday would have been B's mother's 100th birthday so we are marking the occasion with a visit to The Ivy, the original one in West St opposite the Mousetrap. Apparently it has been on the same site since 1917; it has classic stained glass windows from the 1920s, art deco wall lights and a selection of very impressive modern art. It is famed for celebrity spotting, but there weren't any that I could see when we went, just some very earnest discussion between a creative-looking type and an unsmiling group of what I took to be lawyers. Low-volume "American songbook" music is playing in the background. 

Our table is down the far end of the restaurant - quite small, sitting "Greek style" - ie at right angles to each other. The waiter is cheerful and attentive, as we get to order our wine - as you'd expect the wine list is extensive and not cheap. There is a Trebbiano at £29, but otherwise everything is over £40. We order the French Viognier at £46. It arrives quickly, and throughout the waiter is attentive enough to keep our glasses topped up, ensuring we need a second bottle (as if there would be much doubt). 

The menu is quite wide-ranging, with lots of options in the starters that are appealing. It isn't ground-breaking or innovative, but full of classics. The bread - two styles, mini-baguette and a multi-seed roll - comes warm and tempting.  B chooses the ham hock and duck terrine to start, though she'd been thinking of the steak tartare. She's very pleased with that - the duck being a puddle in the middle. I struggled to choose, reluctantly passing on the tuna tartare, duck salad and tempura prawns in favour of bang bang chicken.  This is an excellent version, the peanut sauce with a good kick, the chicken itself juicy and tasty. 

The main course choices are more limited. B chooses the pan-seared halibut with white crab, chilli and lime.  This comes with carnaroli rice, not something we knew, but it turns out to be very creamy, a superior version of risotto arborio rice.  The dish looks very fresh and neat, two fillets of fish perching on top. The crab and chilli however are not very noticeable. She also has the minted peas and buttered broad beans, which are good. 

My choice was roasted Iberico pork chop, which came with chargrilled sweetcorn (not on the cob as advertised thankfully) and celeriac. I also ordered truffle and parmesan fries, which were excellent. The waiter had asked whether I wanted the pork well done, pausing before saying "or pink". I chose pink just as B asked what he recommended - pink. It did come lightly cooked, though not actually pink. Full of flavour with just the right amount of fat.

Although fairly full, we do decide to try desserts. B has the warm dark chocolate fondant with blood orange sorbet. The chocolate oozes beautifully, and the overall effect is very much chocolate orange.   I have to order the vanilla crème brûlée which comes, like at Chez Bruce, in a large flat dish rather than a ramekin, giving a better brûlée to crème ratio.  It's not as vanilla-ary as the CB one though, which remains my all-time favourite. 

We also fell for the truffles chocolates offer - a box of 9 for £18!

Naturally this wasn't cheap, and not helped by a 13.5% service charge. £260, though without the chocolates and with the cheaper wine it could have been a fair bit less. Hard to say whether that was "value for money", but it was all enjoyable and a pleasant experience all round.  It's one way to spend the inheritance. 

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Tuesday, by contrast, I'm meeting a dozen old Home Office colleagues at The Warwick, Pimlico. It calls itself a gastro-pub, but its special offer lunches are priced at £7.50, £11.50 with a pint of Doom Bar. I have the grilled halloumi salad, with a side order of fries (£4) - all the others have mini-fish and chips.

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Wednesday sees us meeting up with P&M back from South Africa, and another ex-BT friend S. We're at Da Mario, a cosy Italian near Covent Garden that we'd been to just once before, many years ago, though B couldn't remember it. Booking for 5 us meant having to pay a £10 a head deposit, but they bring a receipt for that at the start and need no prompting to take it off the bill at the end. The place is full, with a turnover of tables, decorated with photos of Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Sophia Loren playing with spaghetti, and Rat Pack music playing of the lively buzz of punters. No Chianti bottles with candles though. 

We order the Grillo at £32, ending up drinking 5 bottles plus one Barbera (£37.50). Two bottles of sparkling San Pelligrino.  The choice on the menu is remarkable and all four of us struggle to choose, changing our minds several times, and again when we realised there was a "Today's Specials" list on the last page. Unusually, the dishes are listed in price order. B and P have the scallops - four large ones with a slice of crispy bacon. S has deep-fried prawns, dry and crispy. while M and I have the mussels off the specials list - huge bowls, with light wine sauce and toast. 

P had decided in advance he wanted the tagliata - slices of sirloin medium rare, with rocket and parmesan, plus a side of chunky chips.  S has the veal chop, a plate sized slab of flattened and breaded meat - it's lightly cooked, but he says it doesn't have a lot of flavour. It comes with fried courgettes, and he orders a plate of roast potatoes and some mixed grilled vegetables. B has a main course spaghetti with prawns, another large portion, dripping in sauce. M and I have chosen the same again - saltimbocca a la romana from the specials list, with both of us choosing to have it with roast potatoes rather than the advertised mash. There is a load of potatoes - S didn't need to have ordered any himself. The veal is very tasty in a good sauce with ham. We also ordered a bowl of fried courgettes and a rocket and parmesan salad. Overall, a lot of food!

Despite that, B and P decide to have dessert. B has lemon sorbet, and P affogato (vanilla ice cream with coffee). It seems that there's been a mix-up and one of P's scoops is lemon, and one of B's vanilla. We also get complimentary limoncello or amaretto.  

The total is £510, quite a lot, though it did include all that wine. It's been a very pleasant - and filling - lunch but at over £100 a head it feels a little pricey. 

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Thursday evening we are at the Croydon Wine Club, upstairs at the Spreadeagle. Although still saying it is an "Ale and Pie House", the Fuller's pub no longer has pies on its main menu (there is one on the specials board). B has the haddock and chips, while I have scampi and chips. Too many chips! £26 a head including the wine (brought by the Club).

 

 

Kingston Thai and Sardinian fish place at Victoria

 After a shopping spree in John Lewis, we head to the river in Kingston for a late lunch. We decide on Busaba, a Thai place. We have been there before, but not recently.  There are workmen outside, and only a couple of other people in the place, so we get a seat at the window. 

From a short wine list we choose Cullinan View, a chenin from SA, at £27. The menu is quite interesting, but B spots that the single bowls are a lunchtime offer at £11 each so we decide to go for one of those each. B chooses chilli prawns with rice, coriander and Thai basil. I have Chicken Pad Thai. We also order edamame beans with chilli flakes and a som tam - green papaya, dried shrimp, cherry tomato, peanut and chilli.

B is really taken with her prawn dish. There are 6 good sized prawns, and the rice is good and spicy and flavourful. My Pad Thai is good too, less punchy, mainly soy sauce flavoured so a little salty, but plenty of chicken too. The salad could blow your head off - the waitress had warned us. 

With a couple more glasses of wine, the bill manages to get up to £87, despite service at only 10%. Service has been efficient and friendly, but it was quiet mid-afternoon. Very pleasant lunch.

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We have arranged to meet up with T&K, though decided to delay it a week because of rail strikes (even though they were in the end suspended). I'd been indecisive about where to go, offering them a choice of 9 places! Out of these, they went for Olivomare, a Sardinian fish restaurant just a stone's throw from Victoria station, which was one we had never visited. This is part of a small group of restaurants around Belgravia, headed by Olivo, that we went to many moons ago. It's interesting to note how coming out this side of the station puts you in a different world from the Vauxhall Bridge Road side. 

We meet first on the pub next door, The Plumber's Arms. Apparently, this is renowned for being the place Lord Lucan's wife ran into screaming and covered in blood, accusing him of trying to murder her and having killed the nanny.  A coincidence, as it had just been claimed that an AI facial recognition system had identified him in Australia.

The restaurant itself is bright and light, and pretty busy. We are offered a choice of tables, one isolated at the back, the other in the middle with others, so we chose that. There is a good buzz to the place, and the clientele fit a rather narrow well-heeled demographic - Prada handbags.

The wine list is pretty varied and quite expensive - house white is £30.50. There is a section on Sardinian wines, so I ask the waitress's help with choosing one of those. She suggests Karmis Vernaccia, at a reasonable £33.50, which is indeed very good. 

The menu is also impressive, with many dishes I would like to try. In the meantime, bread arrives - including the traditional Sardinian thin crispy "musica da carta" or "piano bread". Finally, we make our selections.

K starts with a crab salad - a bright light dish of white crabmeat with radicchio and celery. T's Sardinian baby octopus stew (moscardini) looks hot and steamy and very dense, that comes served with toast. B has steamed mussels with garlic and parsley - very good-sized mussels, "not messed about with", in just a little wine. My carpaccio of tuna, swordfish and small prawns is good, though rather all dominated by the lemon. 

For main course, K pushes the boat out with a lobster, chargrilled. It looks lovely, a very bright red, split open and well-presented - complete with crackers and utensils for the claws, and served with a green salad. T has fritto misto, a dish I rarely choose because it can be so disappointing. His looks excellent, lightly battered, good chunks of fish and prawns.  B chose the chargrilled monkfish fillet with courgettes - an elegantly dressed but smallish looking portion. Very good though.  I order orata - sea bream, because I remember having it in Sicily. They bring it whole to show me and ask whether I'd like it filleted or not - I do bottle out and ask them to do that. It looks like quite a small portion, but it takes me a while to work my way through as it is full of flavour.  

We also order some deep-fried courgettes - lovely little bites - and a tomato and basil salad - brilliant red cherry tomatoes, dressed with a little oil.

We decide against desserts, though I was tempted by the Sardinian cheese fritter drizzled with honey. Service has been very good, delivering what was needed without intruding.

Three bottles of wine, some water and a rather cheeky 15% service charge take the bill to just over £350. It's been a very good meal, up there with Michelin stars if you are a fish lover. But it's probably special occasions only.