Lunching at Briciole (London)

(Visited September 2012)

In this and the next two posts we go back to the real vocation of our blog: Italian food. We want to show you various embodiments of it that we've sampled in recent travels, from the simplest trattoria to a certain 'Osteria' which in fact offers the best high end Italian dining in the world...

Our Italian gastronomic mini-trip begins...in London. Briciole, which opened less than a year ago (reviewed here) is now in full flow and continues to serve simple, authentic fare that if you closed your eyes would make you think you are in Italy. Like these tagliolini with broccoli and ricotta




 or these pappardelle with (a very generous amount of!) a succulent ragu'


Pasta is very well made here - not surprising given that the mothership is Maurizio Morelli's Latium.

The polpette in 'pizzaiola' (featuring great tomatoes) and the  sausages continue to be addictive

It is only with an enormous exertion of willpower that you can stop eating them. 

But just as you do...temptation is behind the corner, this time in the form of more exalted seasonal delicacies: fresh, chunky porcini, playing their earthy magics with a succulent, properly cooked (i.e., little) tagliata of Galloway beef

 Italian cuisine is strongly produce based and we like the idea of getting the good things that can be sourced where you are, rather than being obsessive in sourcing exclusively Italian products. This Galloway was great and this was one of the best tagliate we've had.

Briciole is fantastic value for money for food, but it is a veritable Heaven for the wine lover. We know of no other place in the UK where wines are so kindly priced. So it happens that you can drink stuff which would break the bank in London fine (and not so fine, too) dining restaurants, while here it just requires that extra effort:
 

 On the alcohol front, there are other interesting temptations. Needless to say, we succumbed. This time it was a Sambuca and a liquorice based concoction where the core aromas leapt at you with marvellous clarity and intensity




Briciole is a place that it's easy to love, when you're in the mood for the sheer joy of uncomplicated Italian cuisine, be it a bite from the gastronomy corner or a full meal. 

And if  you want something fancier in terms of cooking and presentation, remember, Latium is still there...

(Our usual reminder for posts like this that read a bit like ads: we always pay for the meal - although as also always happens everywhere, loyal custom tends to be acknowledged with some extra "attention" ;-) ).

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A triumph of Grouse

Fewer and fewer of the beautiful birds on restaurants' plates, the glorious period that begun on the 12th of August, the opening of the grouse shooting season, is nearing the end.


We have tried many fantastic interpretations of grouse this year: these are the best ones.


Alas, we failed to take the photo of the truly superlative one by the great old man in London, as the last time we went armed with our camera they had run out. But more vivid than a picture, the deep, deep flavour of Koffmann's grouse will stay in our memory till next year. His grouse is something that transcends any intellectual evaluation, it strikes at your taste emotion and you just stop caring any longer about the hours of high techniques and patient preparations that have gone into it: all you want to do is to abandon yourself completely to the sheer pleasure of eating it, to drown in it and forget all the rest!

Martin Wishart's interpretation contrasts markedly with Koffmann's, the latter sheer power, no holds barred, the former with the hair less let down, more of an elegant and sensual beautiful lady or gentleman than an exhuberant youth, delicious in a different way. He had two versions, one accompanied by a foie gras


 


and the other by a boudin





The waiter was astonished that we preferred to forgo one portion of the nobler foie gras (to which we were entitled by our choice of menu) in order to try also the more rustic boudin, but we don't care for the aristocracy of produce and just look for true flavours. We were not disappointed, both were packed with them and technically flawless.

While the chef's touch is exhibited unashamedly in Wishart's dishes, the class of Geoff Smeddle at the Peat Inn is more restrained, developing only slowly while you enjoy and understand the dish and all its hidden subtleties and details,





the meat presented simply and openly, the beautiful colours - visual testimony to a perfect cooking - in evidence, supported by a muscular jus, and notable because of the so welcome abundance of a vegetable element (in this case Puy lentils as the core) so typical of his style. Geoff has a unique knack of making you feel as if you are eating at the same time a rustic and a superfine dining dish (this one also comes accompanied on the side by neatly presented innards on a crusty bread).


Look how very different this presentation at Galvin La Chapelle,





 which while accomplished was a little more austere, a little more rigid, maybe a little less joyous, what do you think? The piece on the left packed a punch of flavour as good as any other sample, while the one on the right divided us, Man finding it slightly more stringy, somehow less convincing than the best ones, while Woman was happy. We agreed that the jus was shiny class, and just so there is no doubt, let us make it clear that even with our modest criticism this is stratospheric level of cooking.

Let's conclude with an Italian version...if you have followed us for a while you know we are great admirers of Maurizio Morelli's skills at Latium. Grouse is not something one finds in Italy, so there's not a traditional Italian way of preparing it, and Maurizio here was unconstrained by the weight of tradition that sometimes tends to shackle Italian chefs in the UK.




Here you will notice, unique among those presented, the symmetric and 'full dish' type of composition that Maurizio likes, and, like at the Peat Inn, a love of vegetables (and blueberries!) that we share (here there was a lovely baked pumpkin, as well a Savoy cabbage, in a red wine and bluberry jus). The cooking was perfect, and the gentleness and the balance of flavours shone as usual even with an assertive grouse.

By the way, did we mention we love grouse?




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Tomino at Latium, and much more

This was a personal 'amuse bouche' before the many delicious dishes we enjoyed recently at our London fave Latium


It's a 'tomino' resting on wild mushrooms trifolati (i.e. sauteed), with pancetta and Norcia black truffle. Tomino is a delicate tasting cheese from Piemonte. It marries joyously with the saltiness of the pancetta and the notes of the noble products from the earth.

These simple delicacies of Italian cuisine are all about ingredients, all about balance: stuff always in plenty of supply at Latium.

That night we were showered with truffles...look at these tagliolini

...and here's one of the great Italian classics:

Ossobuco, in this interpretation beautifully presented in its own sauce, polenta and baby onions, the potent flavour invading your palate as the meat gently yields (the ossobuco is from Cumbria), before you finally tuck into the luscious bone marrow - pure pleasure!

A Herdwick lamb

was paired with perfectly cooked artichokes of metallic intensity, an Anglo-Italian culinary marriage made in Heaven.

And, finally, even Man who lacks a sweet tooth just goes crazy for Morelli's baba' with Zabaione, Pistachio ice cream and hazelnuts


with the full interplay of all the consistencies you might want, from the crunchy hazelnuts in their liquid sauce, souped up by the beautifully springy and spongy baba', drowned in creamy zabaione and topped with a seriously good pistachio ice cream

And what about his Red wine poached pear, water chocolate mousse and almond buscuit.

only apparently more restrained than the Baba': distinctly clean notes in the deep chocolate mousse, the wine soaked pear cooked to the exactly right consistency, with the almond biscuit adding the third texture and rounding all off.

We are always so happy at Latium - Morelli's dishes are simply good and win hands down on so many of the more elaborate, sometimes pretentious and always pricier offerings in the capital. In its category, Latium is just unbeatable.


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Life is beautiful

This

is a Zuppa di ceci con prezzemolo and riccioli di merluzzo nero (Chick pea soup with parsley and curls of black cod).

And we should add, extra-virgin olive oil from outer space… (seriously, it is in fact from our planet, more precisely from Latina). This is an off-menu item we recently enjoyed at Latium. The ensemble was just so balanced, with flavours so clear and so intense, to make you want to shout: this is great! this is the essence of Italian cuisine!

We need to remember this the next time we end up in a pretentious venue – sadly no scarcity, it will surely happen- where we look in vain for a spark on the palate beyond the technique and the smokes and mirrors: eating well is about flavour is about flavour is about flavour.

Well, since we are at it… our dinner continued with some other delights. For example this:

Maltagliati with pheasant ragout and girolles mushrooms

What makes this ragout so damn good –we just can’t get enough of its captivating sweetness- is (beside the great mushrooms) the ‘fond’ (this one of chicken), something which you won’t find in many Italian restaurants in the UK (or even in Italy, for that matter). This is technique not at the service of itself or of the show, but at the service of the dish, just of the dish.

We also had the:

Chicken tortellini in broth

The theme of this dish is delicacy: not your regular in-yer-face Bolognese tortellini, here we have something frankly more refined. But the broth carries enough personality that it alone could be a dish in itself.

And finally just look at this:

Tagliata di manzo with wild mushrooms and potato puree

And this:

Pheasant with cime di rapa (broccoli tips), cauliflower cream and roast potatoes.

You could frame these dishes and hang them on the wall, so beautiful they look. But we ate them instead. They were hearty, they were delicate, and our palates were grateful for that. Admittedly the splendid colour of the beef comes from it being cooked between raw and rare: but isn’t that the best way to taste it? Man and Woman think so.

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Salt cod at Latium

In our last short trip home to London last week we tried Trenta as you know: but could we fail to stop by at Latium? Of course not.

Among the usual spectacular dishes, we liked an off-menu welcome by sous-chef Massimo (the boss Maurizio being off duty that night):


Salt cod in a tomato broth, garnished with nuts and raisins.

The chef can trust that the kitchen is in good hands when he is away...

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