300 St Paul's Road, London N1 (020 7226 2733). Meal for two, including wine and service, £75
Towards the end of our rather lovely dinner at Trullo, the sort of dinner that can restore your faith in the often grisly business of getting food cooked for you by other people in return for money, my companion asked what I didn't like about the place. I mentioned the over-salting of the long-baked aubergines. He agreed. And there was a slight lemon curd-esque quality to the filling of a lemon tart. But that, I said, was more an observation than a criticism. The pastry had been seriously good. I looked about the simply furnished room: the white walls, the open kitchen, the net curtains to halfway up the windows, like a classic Italian trattoria. Most of all there was the chatter and buzz of happy people being fed well, for a sum of money that wouldn't leave them feeling like they had been rigorously violated. Terrifyingly young people moved with determination and ease about the crowded tables.
My one fear, I said, was that they couldn't keep it up; that I'd give it a glowing review and then get emails from furious readers in six months' time saying it was no longer such a star. All this tells you more about my bitter cynicism than it does about Trullo, which, like all great restaurants, makes the business of running them look simple. Get someone with good taste who knows how to cook. Find cheery, efficient waiters. Get the latter to bring what the former has made to the tables, and charge a reasonable sum for it. It is the dream neighbourhood restaurant, though sadly not in mine.
The team here has an interesting pedigree. In the kitchen is Tim Siadatan, one of the original recruits to Jamie Oliver's Fifteen project, who graduated from there to both St John and Moro. The influence of all three places is felt in plates of simple, ingredient-led food, with a generally Italian bent. Front of house is run by Jordan Frieda, who used to be front of house at the River Café. Some have argued that this means the great work of the late Rose Gray is therefore continuing in this small dining room. I'm not so sure. The excruciatingly expensive River Cafe always felt to me like peasant food at plutocrat prices. Here, where a plate of impeccable handmade pasta costs £4.50, it's peasant food at prices the mere bourgeoisie could afford.
The menu is short, self-confident and ever-changing. The success of a cannellini bean bruschetta had less to do with the beans themselves, good though they were, than the wonderful olive oil, the crunch of salt and the aromatic green herbs. The true stars of the piece, though, are the pasta dishes. Wide, butter-yellow ribbons of papperdelle came with an earthy stew of wood pigeon, in a ripe gravy that insinuated itself into every corner of the dish. Tagliarini was mined with nutty, intense brown shrimps and fine strips of courgette – zucchini in the menu, a minor affectation – and chilli. It was perfectly seasoned and judged.
A slab of lamb rump was charcoal charred outside, baby-cheek pink inside and properly seasoned. Alongside it lay a stew of green and yellow beans. Hunks of slow-cooked veal shin were dressed with a perky salsa verde and accompanied by long-baked aubergine which, oversalting aside, had a soft, melting texture. Other than two very serviceable tarts – the Amalfi lemon, and one of almond layered with raspberries – there was a strawberry ice cream and a Charentais melon sorbet. The latter tasted simply like melon blitzed through a sorbet machine, without the aid of extra sugar. This is a good thing.
Wine list pricing is, like everything else here, eminently reasonable. Or, as they say in the small print, "We put a set mark up on all our bottles of wine of about £10, less for inexpensive wines." It is a refreshing candour. Yet I worry. Few people go into the restaurant business to make money, not least because very few do so. Wine mark-ups are one way to stay in business. Making just a tenner on each bottle is very touching, but will it keep the books balanced? I do hope so, because this is one restaurant I want to see succeed.
Email Jay at jay.rayner@observer.co.uk or visit theguardian.com/profile/jayrayner for all his reviews in one place
