Sports Calendar

Then, because it seemed important, I bit the bullet and went back to Locanda. The room, I can report, has mellowed down beautifully. It looks lived in and comfortable now. It’s rather pretty. And it was humming with late midweek lunchers. I ate very well. Deep-fried veal’s foot was simple as cow-toe scampi and came with a tangy little dressing; veal kidneys were pink and squeaky on mash with a thick and powerful jus, no fussing. I had the best salad I’ve had in years, frantic with peas, pumpkin and pomegranate seeds pink as rubies among the leaves; and a taste of the tagliata di manzo in which the beef selection had erred heavily on the side of tenderness rather than flavour, but then that is always the toss-up with beef. The puddings were sensational.

Overjoyed with Locatellery generally, I went back to Refettorio a few days later, drunk after a friend’s memorial service nearby, and found the place heaving impressively with all sorts of people, and by no means just city slickers. A woman in an
executioner’s black toque with a scary knife was banging out quality prosciutto to all comers, people were sprawled at the long table and propped at the bar scoffing bits and pieces and generally getting the hang of the Italian modus scoffendi far quicker than I thought they would. I, alone at a table, climbed outside a bottle of zinfandel and some joyful tagliolini gratinati (I don’t eat a lot of pasta but my stomach needed it) and embarrassed myself yabbering drunkenly at strangers (or possibly hatstands).

And then there was Giorgio, scowling out at the rain through a Venetian blind, dressed so aggressively casually in this spanking new restaurant that he could only have been the owner. I, as I do when I’m tanked up, approached him and burbled fast and loose, apologetic, fidgety, self-hating.

“Have a drink with me,” he said. So we sat at the bar, and I snarfed more lovely ham, and drank a glass of zinfandel and he had a glass of white and some water and I went on and on and on about how embarrassed I was and how I was going to write all about it in my piece on Refettorio and how I was going to write about Locanda as well, and explain how it happened, and talk about chefs and critics generally, and try and make good the damage… and when he was sure I had finished he said:

“Why don’t you just write about the food?”

Cooking: 8
Cured meats: 9
Comfort: 6
SCORE: 7.33
Price: graze for £12 a head or dine for £50.

Locanda Locatelli
8 Seymour Street, London W1 (020-7935 9088)

Crucial to book, don’t have breakfast on the morning, leave room for pudding (even if you normally don’t) and watch out for a maître d’ who looks like Harry Connick Jr but has a voice three octaves deeper.

Pane Vino
323 Kentish Town Road, London NW5
(020-7267 3879)

High-street Italian with brilliant Sardinian specialities and loads of passion. I like it. Turns out Giorgio likes it. What else do you want to know?

E-mail feedme@thetimes.co.uk if you
know somewhere worth reviewing, and maybe we’ll go there together.

Times Recommends

• Caesar & Cicero: Balls & Mandelson
• The anti-sex brigade are the worst
• Small act of charity won’t change the world