Address: 39 Upper Berkeley Street, London W1
Telephone: 020-7723 0394
Price: First courses £3.80-£7.50; mains £7.50-£22.50
Open: All week (except bank holidays), Lunch, 12 noon-3pm; dinner, 6-11.30pm.
Wheelchair access (no disabled WC).
I have a problem. I know where walnut oil comes from, and groundnut oil, and I've actually seen olive oil being produced on an Italian farm by crushing thousands of olives in a wooden press. But nobody has ever told me how the hell they make baby oil, or where the hideous extraction process takes place. Will there one day be yet another case of shame-faced civilians pointing at a nearby windowless building, then averting their eyes and saying, "We knew something was going on in there, but not this ..."?
The oil my nose detected as I entered Biagi's smelled disturbingly like engine oil - and 1980s engine oil at that (it was founded in 1988). The overwhelming impression was of staleness - not just in the cooking but in the decor, too, and I was sorely tempted to step back into Upper Berkeley Street and rejoin the land of the living. I'd just walked past some superbly aromatic Middle Eastern restaurants, and even the odd shop selling bagels (those unsweetened doughnuts with rigor mortis), and any of those would have been a better bet than this trattoria, because what did I find when I ventured inside? An interior resembling Crouch End before Crouch End happened. Artex walls and ceiling, plastic-framed rococo mirrors and Acker Bilk warbling through tinny speakers, the whole wretched scene presided over by a waiter and waitress seated in a pose reminiscent of David Hockney's Mr And Mrs Clark (without their cat Percy), studiously ignoring each other and the clientele.
So why was I there? Because incredible though it now seems, this was once the haunt of celebrities such as Yoko Ono and, most famously, of Kenneth Williams, who ate here regularly until his death in 1988. He'd hold court at table 9, next to the Expelair machine (well, he always liked to have a fan looking on), and although he sometimes asked for a screen to be placed around him to protect him from the public's intrusive gaze, he'd then start talking even louder, so that everybody immediately knew who it was anyway.
As I sat down at my reserved table 9, I realised that, 16 years after Williams' death, Biagi's is still stuck in the 1980s, serving ersatz Italian dishes that should have died out a generation ago. I freely acknowledge that the previous (and brilliant) occupant of this column has a knowledge of Italian cuisine that far outstrips my own (so much so that I bet he would have refused to take a single step past the door), but even I know that pappardelle should not remind one of a student chow mein cooked on a Baby Belling. The spaghetti alle vongole was lacklustre (was some of the seafood from a can?), while the insipid suprema di pollo al parmigiano was surely a joke, as though somebody had sat on a chicken, then shat bechamel sauce on to the flattened corpse. The accompanying vegetables were vile, especially the asparagus tips (which definitely were from a tin) and the fried potatoes, which at least solved the mystery of the aroma of engine oil.
My guest's chicken breast with figs and almonds was equally dismal, while her bruschetta al pomodoro e zucchine looked as though a can of semi-masticated tomatoes had been disgorged on to a crust. Only a decent bottle of Ale di Glesie 1999 (we'd ordered a 2000, but no matter) took the sting away, being intensely honeyed, very fruity and, mercifully, very high in alcohol.
What made me pleased to be here? Absolutely nothing, and looking around at the drab clientele (mostly single chaps of a certain age with Bobby Charlton hairdon'ts), I wondered what Williams ever saw in the place. Back in the mid-80s, when I was a sprog producer for the BBC, I used to book him for chat shows (mainly for the pleasure of listening to his unbroadcastable stories in the green room afterwards), and he once hinted that we should eat here. But, even at that tender age, warning bells rang in my head (although that had more to do with his possible intentions than with the food).
Until this visit, I'd visualised Biagi's as slightly exotic, even Bohemian, but it's not, so what brought him back here, again and again, with his Carry On friends? Well, he loved attention, and he was always the centre of attention here. And, being a tightwad, he'd have liked the prices, too. Most of all, though, he'd have liked the lavatory, which was a sauna-like fortress, all tongued and grooved (ooh-er missus), very private and spotless, right down to the biological handwash. That would surely have appealed because, although Williams' discourse was a never-ending torrent of hilarious filth, he was actually deeply phobic about dirt and real-life bodily functions.
When Eternal Flame by the Bangles replaced Acker, we decided to skip pudding and head for the door. As I left, the waiter asked, "How was it, sir?" I smiled and said, "Execrable", because people seldom know precisely what that adjective means, so they feel pleased and I feel vindicated. As we sped away, those vongole were still reminding me of their existence, and I suddenly recalled those final fateful words from Williams' diary: "The stomach trouble combines to torture me - oh - what's the bloody point?"
