11111111111MIIIIKIMMAIIM I
,NN`z■N-
L'Accento Italiano
IT WAS NOT a good beginning. When we arrived at L'Accento Italiano at the time of our booking we stood for ages, ignored, until I impatiently hailed a persistently blind-eyed waiter. This did not endear me to the place, and I was surprised. In the past month, I have received so many enquiries about this newly opened restau- rant, and so many recommendations from what seem to be instant regulars, that I expected more. This, indeed, was why I went. But I was not long irritated; the charm of the place becomes quickly appar- ent.
Chief among its charms is its cheapness. A robust two-course prix-fixe menu for £10.50 is offered daily, which makes it remarkably more affordable than most new-wave Italians. It is also much less chi- chi: just a box of a barkingly noisy room, walls undecorated, with a few tables out on the street and some more in the area at the back. The initial threat of poor service was not fulfilled, thank God. I had begun to think that my earnestly held belief that there is no such thing as an uncharming Italian was in jeopardy. And as soon as you sit, bread is brought to you — thick slabs of soft ciabatta, some plain, some studded with green olives — and a saucer placed in front of you which is then filled with a glis- tening pool of olive oil. This alone makes me happy.
The menu, an inky script on brown paper, offers a modest a la carte as well as the set menu. If you eat late, the chances are your choices will be much reduced, but that at least is a good sign: you know at least that the food is freshly made and you won't be eating what they couldn't get rid of yesterday. The risotto, black with squid ink, was pungent and sticky as it should be; the sardines stuffed with parsley and garlic
are less commendable. They come rather as sandwiches in reverse, the sardines spread flat and glued together with a bready stuffing. The fishes' oiliness some- how sinks into the stuffing, the result being somewhat dry on the outside and pappy within.
All Italian restaurants should be happy to allow their reputations to rest on their liver, and the liver here was excellent — soft, pink and smoky. The balsamic vinegar sauce, however, was reduced to a honeyed syrup that shouted across the offal's own subtle sweetness. I'm an old-fashioned girl and prefer the familiar gentle rasp of sage. But the pork, great round hunks of it, spritzed with lemon, and sitting, oozing its juices, on top of circles of toasted bread smeared with garlic, was food such as you don't often find except out of the kitchen of boisterously greedy cooks. Crunchy green beans came with both, and wedges of roast potatoes. Unfortunately, the potatoes were stone cold. I'm all for the Italian prac- tice of serving vegetables at room tempera- ture, but I've never been in an Italian room this cold.
For pudding I longed for the chestnut flour dumplings, but these were long fin- ished. I had the ricotta semifreddo instead, and eating it couldn't understand why I hadn't anyway made it my first choice. If you have never eaten a semifreddo, it's hard to describe it: as the name suggests, it is, in a manner of speaking, a not entirely chilled ice-cream, or somewhere between an ice and a mousse, and so much better than either. (And, incidentally, if you're anywhere near Florence this summer, for the best semifreddi in the world go to a lit- tle take-away only ice-cream bar in the via dei Tavolini — just off the via Calzaioli — called 'Perche No?') With three courses each for the two of us and a bottle of good house Sicilian red, the bill came to £50 including service. If we'd chosen the set menu, I imagine we'd have cut that by £15. L'Accento Italiano doesn't rival the best Italian restaurants — I don't imagine they're losing any sleep over it at the River Café — but that really isn't the point of it.
L'Accento Italiano, 16 Garway Road, Lon- don W2 4NH, tel 071-243 220112664
Nigella Lawson
Previous page
