6-7 South Parade, Leeds (0113 246 1500). Meal for two, including drinks and service, £90
I am a bitter, cynical man with much to be bitter and cynical about. I read about a glossy chain of Italian restaurants, the Manchester branch of which is a favourite among footballers and John Prescott, and alarm bells go off. Jimmy Carr tweets from there to tell the world what a lovely time he's having. None of these things make me want to run in bellowing 'I'll have what they're having'. This is because I'm a snob. When I hear that this Manchester branch of the empire claims a turnover – around £170,000 in good week – which puts it on a par with the Wolseley as the highest grossing dining spot in Britain, the alarms are joined by flashing lights. It makes proper money? Something must be wrong. And when I take a look at the menu and discover it is slightly longer than one of Peter F Hamilton's space operas (a reference for sci-fi buffs who will nod knowingly; the rest of you just need to be aware that Hamilton's books are breeze-block thick) I start locking the doors and drawing the curtains. A chain like that can't be good.
Can it?
And yet for a while now people I respect have been saying admiring things to me about San Carlo, the first of which opened in Birmingham in 1992. The latest is in Leeds, a city which seriously needs a few more choices. Leeds is dominated by the Flinn family, who are terrific restaurateurs, but they have almost become the only game in town. And now there's San Carlo which, with its shine and glitz, thick white table cloths, brightly-hued banquettes and vast portions at reasonable prices, is just what the city needed.
Yes, that menu really is absurdly long – what is escargot bourguignon doing on a list of Italian dishes? – and it's very hard to navigate. Open it one way and you get an endless list of dishes; open it another way and you get the wines. Open it a third way and it becomes a portal into Narnia. (Look, a boy can dream). And yes, having a separate specials of the day menu which has clearly been printed a good while before yesterday, looks a bit odd. But everything we ate there was good in an 'I'll have that again' sort of way.
When the frittura di pesce Portofino for two arrived it was so large, so volumous, that I became suspicious I had been rumbled and they had decided to deep fry the entirety of the day's catch just for me. Then I saw exactly the same dish being heaved on to another table – a pile of golden, lightly battered king prawns, knotted squid tentacles and sizable scallops, leaving the plate almost greaseless - and I realised this was just the way they do things here. A bowl of good tartar sauce, another of a chilli dip. Halves of lemon. A sense that no one really minds if you eat with your fingers. In London they'd charge north of £25 for something like this and make you feel like they were doing you a favour; here, it's £17.70.
The same was true of ribbons of good tagliolini in a ripe tomato sauce with a hint of chilli and the contents of half a lobster at under £17, the whole rested prettily on the emptied shell. Calves' liver, with the smokey char of a proper grill, came in an unfinishable trio of thick slices with a butter and sage sauce, and rare as requested. We ordered green beans to make us feel virtuous and a heap of zucchini fritti because it's against the law not to do so if they are on the menu. I feel a sense of shame at the memory of the pile of rustling shards of battered courgette we left behind. It was wrong, I tell you, just plain wrong. But then even I have my limits. We ordered dessert, a classic cassata of layered ice cream with a smear of forest fruits jam, but more because the job demands it than out of need (though I rather like the notion that at some point ice cream might genuinely be needed).
But what was most striking was the sense of a restaurant that knows exactly what it's doing and why. This San Carlo may only have opened recently, but it is staffed for the most part by reassuringly mature chaps who look like they've been knocking around with the firm for a good while, and with good reason. Which describes the whole business. So I put my hands up and admit my cynicism was completely misplaced. It seems it is possible to run a chain like this one well. Footballers sometimes do eat in nice restaurants. It is just possible that John Prescott has good taste. Why is San Carlo thriving in a recession? It's very simply. They know what they are doing.
Email Jay at jay.rayner@observer.co.uk or visit theguardian.com/profile/jayrayner for all his reviews in one place
