Emilia, Bonhams, 7 Haunch of Venison Yard, London W1K 5ES (020 7468 5868). Antipasti and starters £6-£15; mains £21-£32; desserts £10; wines from £26
After dinner at Emilia, the new restaurant inside the Bond Street headquarters of the auctioneers Bonhams, I went in search of the loo. On the way I found one of the thrilling side benefits of a meal here. An internal window in the broad corridor looked down on to one of their brightly lit galleries, displaying works for a forthcoming show; pieces of art which emerge briefly out of private hands for sale, only to disappear from public view again once the hammer has come down. Here were lilies by David Hockney and butterflies by Damien Hirst. There were works by Banksy and Peter Blake and Roy Lichtenstein. A female nude by the late Tom Wesselmann had about it a distinctly languorous, satisfied, postcoital air.
Back at the table I opened the bill and thought: “You and me both, love.” I too had been royally screwed, and I’d also enjoyed it very much. If you want to work yourself up into a spittle-flecked rage over the £15 or so charged here for a starter and the £32 charged for a main course, get it out of your system now. Froth for Britain. Froth like the wind. When you’re done, I’ll still be here telling you all about my lovely night out and how it chafed a bit, while the rest of you start saving.
Someone at Bonhams has extremely good taste. Back in 2015, looking to utilise their wine department’s knowledge and stock, the gifted young chef Tom Kemble was installed, in a glass-walled dining room seating just a couple of dozen. My review then was a soft, greedy hymn to all the good things. The space is still crisp and clean, but Kemble has moved on. Bonhams has replaced him with the much-admired team behind Clipstone and Portland. Where those modern bistros serve a broadly eclectic menu, here it’s tightly focused on Italy’s Emilia-Romagna, much as a determined pyromaniac focuses the sun’s rays through a magnifying glass. Chef Stuart Andrew’s concise menu is an object lesson in the value of doing just a few things exceptionally well.
We get one-mouthful caramelised onion tarts to begin, made with buttery pastry so crumbly it holds together only through self-esteem and charisma. Alongside are pebbles of a powerfully aged parmesan, crunchy with crystals of tyrosine. From the list of antipasti, we have courgette fritti. Usually these are cut so very thin, and battered so enthusiastically, that frankly they could be made from hedge trimmings or dandelions. You pretend they’re healthier than chips because, look! A bona fide green vegetable was involved.
These are almost finger-thick, but manage not to become soggy. They are super-crisp but, good God, taste of actual courgette. They are miraculous. On the side is a bowl of a frothy wild garlicky aioli, the colour of blitzed Kermit. It is, as the best food items are, a distraction from the passage of time. Nothing matters now more than these courgette fritti and this bowl of oniony, garlicky outrageousness to pull them through. A second plate brings perfectly sliced skin-on diamonds of mackerel, cured to a salty-sour tension, and dressed with glugs of grassy olive oil and a single disc of red chilli each. Oh, the detail. We snaffle them, then mop with pieces of golden-crusted foccacia. We laugh quietly at our good fortune.
An old stager like vitello tonnato is given a buff and a scrub, while still staying true to itself. The thinly sliced veal is carpaccio-red beneath a controlled Jackson Pollock of tuna and anchovy sauce, with caperberries and translucent petals of caramelised onion and leaves of rocket. It is a grand bunch of forkfuls waiting to happen. As is a bowl of tagliatelle. There is a cream-bolstered sauce of roasted garlic, the bulbs cooked down to a sultry funk and sweetness. Fragile pieces of slow-cooked rabbit are in there, all of it under snowfields of finely grated parmesan and serious intent. I did a quick check and it works out at just under a billion calories a plateful. I cherished every single calorie. This dish manages the neat trick of elevated Italian cooking: of being both earthy and classy at the same time. Think Tommy Lee Jones with his shoes polished to a shine.
There is a saltimbocca of Middle White, thinly sliced pork lined with prosciutto and rolled over on itself. There are sage leaves fried to a crisp, and a silky carrot purée that is so soft and velvety it could be flogged by Olay as a new skincare product. The whole thing is brought together by a glossy jus, of a sort you can see your reflection in. It is a deep and encouraging plateful. Buried at the bottom is a pile of rainbow chard to suggest you’ve been good. Though if virtue is what you’re after, you want the bronzed piece of halibut on a heap of crunchy green beans with a deep puddle of garlic butter.
A dessert of wild strawberry granita with fennel ice cream teeters on the edge of being just creamy things in a bowl of the sort I roll my eyes at repeatedly for profound laziness. It gets a pass for being so precisely calibrated; for tasting so intensely of strawberry, as only the wild variety can, and for serving the ice cream with its aniseed kick at the perfect temperature. Plus, there are ribbons of meringue. Those always make me happy. A bitter chocolate tart with milk ice cream is light and dark on a plate. It is night and day, dancing away together. Instead of an overwhelming ganache filling the crisp pastry shell, this has the wobbling texture of the finest set custard, boosted with the best of cocoa solids.
We drink a bottle of something crisp from Crete, because I’m going there this summer and need to get the training in. Though really, I order it because it’s the second cheapest on the geographically restless list – which, at £32, isn’t cheap at all. You’ve got the message. Beyond the door in the gallery, awaiting purchase, is some of the world’s greatest art, and in this dining room is some of London’s best Italian food. This being Bonhams, and this being Bond Street and this being 2019, it all costs. It doesn’t stop Hockney’s lilies being divine or Andrew’s pasta being worthy of a love letter. Just be prepared to gawp at some big numbers come the bill.
News bites
Talking of unexpected places in which to find cracking Italian food, Festa Sul Prato is a café located in the reconditioned toilet block of a park in Deptford, south London. As well as a through-the-day offering including chunky sourdough sandwiches – salami, gorgonzola and rocket for example, or cream cheese and smoked salmon – for a fiver, there’s a bigger lunch and dinner menu. There’s a changing list of pastas, alongside mains such as roasted asparagus or fennel sausages with rosemary potatoes. A full meal here could easily cost less than a starter at Emilia (festasulprato.com).
Smack Lobster, a casual spin-off from the Burger and Lobster chain, offering a range of lobster rolls in brioche buns, has transitioned to the cloud. It has closed its bricks-and-mortar outpost on Dean Street in London’s Soho, but the menu is still available across central London through Deliveroo. There are plans to roll it out across the capital.
Chef-restaurateur Nico Simeone is bringing his ever-changing tasting menu brand to England for the first time. Six by Nico, already established in Edinburgh, Glasgow and Belfast, will open in Manchester in July (sixbynico.co.uk).
Email Jay at jay.rayner@observer.co.uk or follow him on Twitter @jayrayner1
