POLPO, 41 BEAK STREET, LONDON W1 (020 7734 4479). MEAL FOR TWO, INCLUDING WINE AND SERVICE, £50-£70
The last time I was in Venice I got drunk on a bottle of amaretto while sitting on the edge of St Mark's Square. The most remarkable thing about this sentence is that, despite the liquor in question – liquid marzipan for meths drinkers – I appear still to recall the incident though, to be honest, only in the way car crash victims recall the initial skid and the shudder. I was 18 years old. I was skint – or at least I was after I'd bought the amaretto. The point is that this was the sum of my gastronomic adventures in Venice. So when the team behind Polpo, in London's Soho, tell me it is a Venetian-style bacaro, or cafe, I can but nod sagely. What the hell do I know about bacaros?
Not that this matters, for it is, of course, a hip Londoner's version of a bacaro. That said, the island it most keenly recalls is not the one off the edge of Italy's moist inner thigh, but that off the corner of the US's Eastern seaboard. There are bare brick walls and wood bits painted a lightly distressed shade of beige. There is a beaten metal ceiling and guttering candlelight even in daylight. It is exactly the sort of place you'd find in New York's Soho, even down to the staff who are skinny and bed-haired, and look like they kick back after service by doing the sort of things they would never dream of telling their mothers about.
We are, then, in a highly studied, minutely finessed urban restaurant, but one which shrugs off the burden of the poseur – being branded all style and no substance – by dint of the food. It is fashionable, at the moment, to mutter about meals of small plates being tiresome and passé. Bollocks, says I. Being blessed with a boredom threshold so low even Tom Cruise couldn't walk under it, I give thanks for these parades of small tastes, particularly here where the pricing is forgiving and the portions generous. Apart from the charcuterie, nothing costs much more than £6 and a lot are cheaper than that. It means you forgive those that misfire: a crostini of anchovy and chickpeas at a mere £1.10, for example, which didn't deliver enough of the salty fish, or £4 worth of pumpkin risotto, which was slippery rather than rich, and lacked flavour. More disappointing was an over-salted plate of pork belly with hazelnuts and radicchio. You know how it hurts me to see good pork belly go to waste.
Other things were very good indeed. The chopped liver on another crostini had a wintery smokiness to it, as did a fold of flat bread, scorched on a griddle to black in places then layered with slices of garlicky wild mushrooms. Best value was a fritto misto of squid, anchovies and prawns in a greaseless batter. Elsewhere in town they would sting you for a tenner for this; here it's £6.60. And yes, I know I'm going on about the price, but a restaurant in the capital which doesn't feel like it's trying to knee you in the groin while lifting your wallet ought to be praised.
Best of the fish dishes was also the most extraordinary to look at. Strips of cuttlefish in its own ink, crusted with gremolata, was black in the way Darth Vader's helmet was black. It sucked the light out of the room, looked like the sort of thing only people deranged by hunger might eat. But oh, was it worth it: it was sweet, a little fishy, a touch bitter, not unlike me really.
As the chef here used to cook at nearby Bocca di Lupo, it was no surprise that the crumbly, coarse Cotechino sausage with braised cabbage and mustard was a banker. It was great when he made it at the last place, too. Slow-roasted duck in a thick tomato stew was a dish I admired rather than loved, because of the slight medicinal tang from the black olives, but there was no quibbling with the rosemary-roasted potatoes.
Desserts – a bit of semifreddo, a chocolate pot – are an afterthought, and the wine list could be mistaken for one. It is exceptionally short. However, on closer inspection it turns out to have been carefully constructed, from the half-litre jugs of house stuff at £9, to a few more interesting bottles further on.
It is possible that somewhere in the low-ceilinged 18th-century building, apparently once the London home of the artist Canaletto, there is also a bottle of amaretto, but I didn't enquire. I've been there. Done that.★
