WHEN a good new restaurant opens in a restaurant critic's
vicinity, believe me that the last thing the restaurant critic wishes to do is advertise the fact. When Gina Taddei Opened Cibo, it must be a couple of years ago now, his site was just far enough away from me to make me untroubled by such qualms. His new venture, not Cibo Due as it might be called, but L'Altro, which makes it unpronounceable to unrolling English mouths, is more or less on my doorstep. I've been longing for it to open but now that it has, I must resign myself to the fact that I will not be able to keep it quiet. I went on its fourth day in business and there wasn't an empty place in the room. Admittedly it's a small room, but already you can tell that Gina Taddei and his bionic chef, Claudio Pecorari who flits from one establishment to the other at the moment, have another success on their hands.
Where L'Altro is — in Kensington Park Road between 192, whose kitchen is back up to fdrm again, and Westbourne Park Road — used to be a delicatessen run by an exceedingly bad-tempered couple with a dog. Austrians I think they were. The space is unrecognisable: the walls are covered with trompe l'oeil effects, of crumbling plasterwork and faded frescoes, antique statuary and shuttered windows, so that One feels one is in some quaint and pic- turesque courtyard in the quartiere antico of what I presume is meant to be Taddei's native Genoa. If it all sounds fussy and overdone, it isn't. Chunky wood tables and chairs and deep-hued, hand-painted china, infinitely covetable, work towards the desired effect, which is one of surprising charm and honest solidity. Another factor Which seriously undermines any residual potential dinky-daintiness is the noise. Whether it's the effect of the hard floor or the robustness of the locals, it is loud. The cibo at L'Altro is fish and vegetables only, but the style of cooking is familiar, and reassuring, Italian food by way of Italy, not by way of California: courgette flowers stuffed with basil and ricotta, clams in an odoriferous stew of wine, garlic and chillies, linguine with sweet-fleshed lobster, red mullet with shallots and spinach and a thick and inky dish of cuttlefish with potatoes. If prices look high — anttipasti average about £6.50, pasta about £9 and main courses go from £9.50 to twice that — it should be said that portions are huge and it is taken for granted that no one will eat more than a single course if that's all they want.
I started with a rocket salad with red mullet and scallops. The tangle of peppery leaves perfectly offset the just-seared, still soft and sweet-fleshed scallops and the fil- leted chunks of red mullet, a fish with a savage, almost offally, inexpressibly Mediterranean flavour. Cibo used to have a wilted spinach and crumbled luganega sausage salad, hot and oil-soaked, on its menu, and this is its fishy equivalent: per- fectly balanced, overpoweringly right. I could have dined on this alone and been happy. But I continued — not with a main course but a pasta dish. The spaghetti alla scogliera — with every conceivable seafood — came in a pyramid on a vast oval plate. I should have made enquiries earlier, not because it wasn't splendid, because it was, but simply because I am insistent on having my shellfish sauces in bianco: I abhor the addition of tomatoes. Others may not share this taste, so all will be well. And anyway, I'm sure that if I had thought to ask, I could have had mine tomatoless.
Also tried were the sardines, stuffed to silvery corpulence, with a garlicky, bread- crumby, lemony mix and cooked in a juice- preserving envelope of foil, and a quite spectacular plate of white pasta with black mushrooms. This, along with my rocket and scallops, was perhaps the greatest success of the evening: the soft, almost fleshiness of the thick homemade pasta, the perfect blanket for the pungent boskiness of the funghi. We are, incidentally, on the eve of the wild mushroom season and Taddei has plans. I wait, and salivate.
Dinner for two, with a bottle of divinely heady and robust white wine from Sardinia (Cala Viola, £13.50) and a plate of panna cotta, a relatively unsugary, pale and ele- gant form of creme caramel, came to £55. On more casual visits, I should imagine f20 could be knocked off that price, though, to be frank, with food this good it's always harder than anticipated to stick to only one course.
L'Altro, 210 Kensington Park Road, London W11; tel: 071 7921066/1077
Nigella Lawson
Can 1 swap Jimmy Tarbuck for Bob Monkhouse?'
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