8 Gillingham Street, London SW1V 1HJ (020 7769 9771). Meal for two, including drinks and service: £60-£100

Tozi is a desperation booking. We are going to a Sunday morning prom at the Royal Albert Hall and need somewhere to eat afterwards. We don’t want special. We want sustaining. Going south from the Royal Albert Hall isn’t a good idea. Head down Exhibition Road, and before you know it you’re on the Fulham Road. I don’t proclaim any food allergies apart from eating on the Fulham Road. Last time I went down there I ended up in the Farm Girl Café, looking hungrily at a Yorkshire terrier which was eating better than I was. There’s always Bibendum, but that’s sell-a-child-into-slavery-to-pay-the-bill territory. I’m not against that on principle. What’s one child against Claude Bosi’s tripe and cuttlefish gratin? But you do have to be in the mood.

So I look a mile or two east on the map to Victoria and spot Tozi: Venetian cicchetti or small plates. That sounds just the thing to follow a culturally sustaining morning of Chopin and Tchaikovsky and velvet plush. Victoria is not St Mark’s Square. The Vauxhall Bridge Road is not the Grand Canal. But that’s the brilliance of restaurants. Done well they can be your own bespoke travel agency, taking you where you want to be.

Or perhaps not. Tozi, Venetian slang for a group of friends, isn’t some faux bacari. It is very much a London restaurant, an echoing space of huge white-washed walls and high ceilings. If you are one of those with hearing issues related to hard surfaces – and you have my sympathies; my late mother was just so benighted – Tozi will not make you happy. Go elsewhere; I promise you I’ll look out for somewhere thickly carpeted.

To one side is a big open kitchen because it’s now the law. To the other is a counter marked by hanging salumi and hams for the plating up of cold dishes. There’s also a set of huge frosted doors, with the restaurant’s name visible in reverse on it. I ask one of the staff what’s through there. “That’s the Park Plaza Hotel.” I stare at the door. Yay me! I have booked in for lunch at a Park Plaza Hotel. You know how it is: snobbery springs eternal.

But then the food starts to arrive and that snobbery withers. The menu is lengthy, though partly because they list individual portions of almost every cheese and cured meat they have. We get a mixed board of the latter, machine-sliced in the Italian style: of funky, two year-aged Parma ham and coppa with panels of gossamer fat the white of ivory, and silky mortadella a fine shade of Peppa Pig. It’s all exceptionally well looked after.

Apart from a few sizeable pasta dishes most of it really is small plates at between £5 and £10, which can be doubled in size if you fancy. From the list headed “baked” comes a side plate-sized pizzetta layered with stringy mozzarella, chopped purple sprouting broccoli because we must all eat our greens, and the profound slap of spicy nduja. The flat bread is blistered and burnt prettily at the edges and disappears swiftly.

From the fritti list we order artichokes. I assume they will be in the Roman style: whole baby globe artichokes, deep fried to brown and crisp. In London the only place I know that does them regularly is Bocca di Lupo so I’m excited. Instead these are chopped pieces of artichoke, battered tempura-style and deep fried with a pot of aioli for dredging. My disappointment with what they’re not shouldn’t get in the way of the loveliness they are. Their matchstick zucchini fritti are just as good as those served by Francesco Mazzei at Radici. This is high praise.

There is a hefty £38 price tag on a dish of hand-cut tagliolini, but it is justified by the size – there’s enough here for three – the generous shavings of black truffle and the quality. Each velvety strand has that gnarly hand-shaped appearance which suggests the attentions of a details freak, and comes in a shiny emulsion of butter and pasta water. It is that ideal thing: adult nursery food.

We have pearly flakes of roasted cod, in a tomato broth with clams demanding to be sucked off the shell. Then comes a classic saltimbocca, the veal beaten thin and layered with Parma ham and sage before being fried to crisp and dressed with a glossy veal jus. It is the thinnest saltimbocca I have come across. We finish with a goblet of tiramisu, the cream element an emerald green courtesy of pistachios. Some Italian purists will scowl at such a thing but that’s OK. More for me.

It is one of those subtle pleasures: the lunch that gently exceeds your underwhelming expectations by some distance. It makes up for our slightly maudlin air. The Prom we had attended that morning was performed by the startlingly talented European Union Youth Orchestra, which has been London-based since being founded here 40 years ago. Now, because of Brexit, it must relocate to Italy and there is no certainty that British musicians will remain a part.

Likewise, I keep hearing of serious staff shortages as the non-British EU nationals who are the backbone of our restaurant industry, head home because of the uncertainty. The young all-Italian front of house staff at Tozi are terrific: friendly and engaged without being stalkerish. If they too decide to go, it will be our loss but who could blame them? From time to time readers whine about me referencing the ludicrous, abject folly of Brexit in this column. I won’t apologise. The damage to both our restaurant sector and cultural life in general may well be the least of it, but it’s significant. If Brexit stops, so will I.

As to Tozi I have two gripes. Firstly, there’s the all-Italian wine list, which is startlingly devoid of anything approaching affordability. I spot a bottle of something rough for £26 before it leaps deep into the mid-30s. Secondly, there is the curse of the restaurant attached to a hotel. The bill arrives with the service charge added. There is also the opportunity for hotel guests to sign it off to their room. And then a second line inviting them to leave a tip. Which means they’re asking twice for extra money on top. It’s shoddy, not least because with a quick bit of printer reformatting it’s completely avoidable.

News bites

Edinburgh’s Valvona & Crolla on Elm Row is nothing less than an institution. The extensive all-day menu includes the likes of pork and beef meatballs in tomato and basil sugo or pappardelle with prawns, courgettes and lemon and is supplemented by daily specials. Prices are moderate and the wines from their retail lists exceptionally good value (valvonaandcrolla.co.uk).

Startling financial figures from the global Hakkasan Group. They recorded losses of $145.5m and in the UK revenues were down 11%. It can’t be down to undercharging. London’s Hakkasan has some of the most expensive single menu items in the city, including whole braised abalone at £350.

Real Junk Food Manchester, which recently closed its first restaurant utilising ingredients that might otherwise go to waste, is launching a crowdfunder to create the city’s first outside catering business using food waste. They are hoping to raise £50,000. See @realjunkfoodmcr on Twitter for more.

Email Jay at jay.rayner@observer.co.uk or follow him on Twitter @jayrayner1