Lennox Garden Mews, London SW3 (020 7589 2062). Meal for two, with drinks and service: £150
A warm summer's day in the capital and Toto's has a trick up its sleeve. We could sit inside in the shadow of the huge, glowering Belgian fireplace, alleged to have been owned once by Churchill. It's a nice enough space, this dining room, with the high white vault of the chapel it once was and the restrained flashes of gold and the hush. But who wants to be in here on a day like this? For out there is a walled courtyard, a still space in Knightsbridge, where the world is paused and the thick linen dampens the sound. There is chilled prosecco poured into misted glasses, and nibbles of thin crisped bread sandwiching folds of mortadella, and waiters so pretty they could make a living simply by being looked at.
We scan the menu, hoping against hope that a stolen place like this won't come at a premium. But of course it does: pasta starters are in the mid-teens; mains dance elegantly towards the £30 mark and beyond with barely a glance back over their shoulder. This, then, is a restaurant you come to for a reason. You come here to say "Sorry" or "I love you" or "Sod it, what have we got to lose?" Not that you'd know it from the other punters. Witness the £3,000 Chanel handbags dumped on the cobbled ground like so many burlap sacks and the Botox treatments which are exhausted from trying to keep all of that in place. These are tables of people without a reason. They don't need one. They are here because this is where people like them go. Quickly you sense that not one of them has a desk to which they must return after lunch. They have other people to do all the sitting at desks. Fair enough. We will have to be the people here for a proper reason.
Toto's has been located here quietly, at the end of this London mews, for decades. It was one of those restaurants you might have thought had closed if you ever thought of it at all. A few months ago it fell into new ownership and was spruced up. Silvano Giraldin, the legendary maître d' of Le Gavroche, was brought in as a consultant, which is enough to make many of us pay attention. (Once, at Le Gavroche, I waxed adolescent about the way Giraldin had taken a complex order from our table with his hands behind his back and nothing more than a few cooing words to congratulate us on our superb good taste. "Clearly you didn't see the kid standing 6ft away scribbling like mad on his notepad," my wife said. Giraldin is the master of the restaurateur's art of theatrical misdirection.)
Along with Giraldin's sage advice came an entirely Italian wine list, with prices at the bottom end that are far less suffocating than those on the food menu, and an Italian chef, Stefano Stecca, with time at Zafferano on his CV. Apparently his instructions were to take Italian peasant food, pelt it with truffles and general largesse and make it proper spendy. The result, if you can handle the price tag, is rather fabulous; a set of dishes with a certain elegant simplicity. It's the sort of simplicity which is complicated to achieve.
From the list of antipasti there is an asparagus salad which is a tribute to the deft use of a mandolin. Poor commis chefs will bleed to make this salad, for the mandolin gets even the most experienced in the end. Every raw spear has been sliced on the bias so that you could read the menu through it. There are equally thin slices of summer truffle, and right in the middle of this artfully arranged artless heap, a cool cooked egg yolk that, once punctured, leaks its way throughout the sliver and dice. It is a plate of food that feels like it is looking after you.
The list of pastas – the likes of tagliatelle with more truffle, tagliolini with lobster, pappardelle with duck ragout – comes with a waiter's warning that they are served "al dente in the Italian style, but if you wish them cooked longer it can be done". It could sound like an admonishment, but somehow it doesn't. Still, I do not ask for my spaghetti – with a dairyload of pecorino and handfuls of crushed black pepper – to be cooked beyond what the chef can bear. The pasta has bite and softness, the salt and butter richness of the cheese and a big hot peppery finish. A starter portion induces a deep, elemental sigh; a main course portion might lead to blissful coma.
Main courses sound straightforward: calf's liver, veal chop. Both are lessons in getting it right, framed by shiny porcelain. There are three thick pieces of squared-off liver cooked with pitch-perfect judgement. There is a slight char and then, inside, a delicate wobble, and that careful offal sweetness. There is a tangle of wilted spinach and a few crisped sage leaves and a dribble of sticky jus. A mouthful of this and your blood thickens and pumps. Your body seems to applaud you for ordering it. The veal chop is a brilliant piece of meat – as it should be for £30 – treated with all the care and attention it deserves. It is thick cut, grilled to bronze and properly rested. Another jus and a few squared potatoes close the deal.
An orange and mascarpone tart, a slightly oversweetened version of classic curd tart, is a surprise for merely being OK. There is a dense squelch to the pastry which makes it heavy-going. By contrast, a basil panna cotta is the sort of thing you scoop into and then stare at. I order it because it sounds like a terrible idea. It turns out to be a high point, a dessert made by someone who has been making it this way for many years. It is cool and light, not oversweet, and with just an airy high note of the basil, like someone's perfume sniffed on the air after they've passed. Most striking is the texture: it's like a newly opened tin of magnolia paint, just begging for a stir. It is cream squared.
I finish with an espresso, and this being a serious Italian restaurant, it is as it should be, full of dark and nutty caramel notes. The bill is large, but the cost is understood. The air is still. The city feels as if it is at rest. And we are done.
Jay's news bites
■ The nearby La Petite Maison has much in common with Toto's: the bill will make you wince, and too many punters are the wrong shade of Eurotrash orange. But the Provençal-accented food of Raphael Duntoye makes it all worthwhile. He has a talent for making the simple more than itself. Hell, the whole roasted black leg chicken is so popular it should be ordered when you book. Likewise, his crème brûlée is the best in town (lpmlondon.co.uk).
■ Terre à Terre, the award-winning Brighton-based vegetarian restaurant, has entered into a partnership with the Stanmer Community Garden Group, a charity supporting people with physical and mental health issues through allotment projects. Produce is traded for restaurant vouchers and then used on a special Great Growers menu (terreaterre.co.uk).
■ Life in Ramallah on the West Bank may be tough, but at least there are distractions. A local restaurateur is building a version of the Krusty Krab, the joint where Spongebob Squarepants works. Photos show remarkable detail. Haven't they suffered enough?
Email Jay at jay.rayner@observer.co.uk. Follow Jay on Twitter @jayrayner1
