Luciano

The day: 4^th March 2009, Dinner.

The place: 72 St James Street, London SW1A 1PH (tel: 020 7408 1440)

The venue: Luciano

The food: Italian

The drinks: Interesting wine list, heavily Italian. Also by the glass.

 THIS RESTAURANT HAS CLOSED (as this review concluded, 'Perhaps the bar is its most useful part. It’s hard to see a bright future for the rest.'...)

Our Toptable booking calls this restaurant (unlike their business card) ‘Luciano – Marco Pierre White’, showing a burning desire to emphasise the association with the great and prematurely retired chef. It remains to be seen whether he should also be equally proud of this association…(we aren’t sure, nor sufficiently interested to find out to be frank, whether he is part patron or he just acts as a consultant).

Located in monstrously wealthy St. James, the interior is suitably chic in both large rooms, the first mainly occupied by a large bar area, and the other comprising the restaurant proper, the wall displaying many photographs of scantily dressed women, the floor made of nice wood planks. We sit at the corner end of an impressive leather upholstered bench, with soft lights and an abat-jour on the table. The tables themselves are very close to each other, but thanks to the vast space you will only be forced to breath your neighbour’s breath when the restaurant is completely full, which looks quite a feat.

The menu offers many simple Italian classics, mostly overpriced. We will be choosing from a restricted Toptable special menu which offers three courses for an enticing £21.95.

The bread arrives.

The accompanying oil is of high quality, slightly citrusy, probably Tuscan. The bread itself pleases us with some variety: ciabatta, olive bread, casareccio, rosemary, walnuts and raisins. And we cannot complain about the quality, either.

No amuse bouche, of course, and so we move straight to our first courses:

- Soup of the day

- Cold beef salad with mustard sauce

The soup of the day turns out to be a Ribollita which, for those of you who don’t know, is a traditional rustic Tuscan thick bean soup. It ought to ooze rich flavour. This one doesn’t. It is strikingly unmemorable, a typical product of soulless cooking, though not at all unpleasant, except for the slightly undercooked beans.

The beef salad is supported by the good core raw material. The unadvertised ungraceful, lame rocket mountain is redolent of 90’s memories. The parmesan is also surprisingly lame. The mustard fails to light up this dish, which is however not unpleasant thanks to the beef, and to a style that, while soulless, at least does not lack balance.

For both dishes, the portions are generous.

At this point the waiter tries to take away our unfinished bread basket. We almost faint. After making our need for bread (especially having skipped pasta) clear, the waiter will come back with a new full basket, and even with fresh olive oil. Nice touch, and even half a smile!

And here come our mains:

- Rib-eye steak.

- Chargrilled tuna with rocvket and tomato

What a good steak, the rare cooking as requested allowing the beef to express its full flavour and texture! It really is very good, and compares more than favourably, for example, with the one we had here. But the chips, oh dear, the chips, what a disaster. Typical mushy texture inside of defrosted and badly cooked stuff. Well, you too can probably tell from the picture. MPW would not like that.

Like the rib eye, the tuna, too, is good, perfectly cooked so as to be moist and succulent, and even excellently seasoned. There are no horrible chips to spoil the feast here, just once again the banal rocket salad. Were the advertised tomatoes there? We think not, and much better this way.

And finally, our desserts:

- Ice cream selection

- Torta del giorno

The ice-cream (vanilla and chocolate) is just OK, the vanilla exceedingly sweet and the chocolate lame. Uhm, to be fair we are being generous: this is just passable.

The cake of the day is a chocolate tart. The crust is good, crumbly, the chocolate is ifairly deep, though it leaves a burnt aftertaste. For the vanilla ice-cream, see above.

Overall, including a Dolcetto D’Alba Parusso 2007 at around £30 and a bottle of water, the total bill comes to £91.69 thanks to the special deal. Otherwise, you’d be looking very far North of £100.

This venue has a service problem, at least on the night we were there. The manager is utterly charmless and useless (we spare you the details), and the waiters, while professional and kind overall, look so sad that you wonder whether the manager tortures them before and after the service.

Cuisine-wise, we fail to see the point of Luciano. Nothing except for the chips was totally bad, something was good, most was deeply average. At full prices, it would not make sense to head there, we think, given the many superior Italian choices nearby. This is neither a destination venue, nor a proper neighbourhood restaurant. The very plain and unimaginative food is trattoria style, a trattoria in the middle of St. James’, at St James’ prices and, especially, without much of the flavour impact you’d find in a real trattoria (though, we repeat, we found some trattoria generosity in the portions). Marco Pierre White surely does not advice on dish presentation. We leave it to him to decide what this establishment is. Perhaps the bar is its most useful part. It’s hard to see a bright future for the rest.

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Bollito Misto at Osteria Fior di Roccia

‘Bollito misto’ (let’s say ‘Mixed boiled meats’) is one of the great classics of Italian popular cuisine: an assortment of ‘plebeian’ cuts of meat and poultry cooked in broth. We enjoyed an interpretation by Michele Menestrina at this great little joint overlooking the dreamy Valle dei Laghi (Lake Valley) which eventually leads from Trento to Lake Garda.

To stimulate our appetite (really no need, since we need to recuperate the usual 1000 metre ascent in the snow - with ‘ciaspole’, also known as snow rackets - of the previous day), a little present from the kitchen, a trattoria amuse bouche:

It’s a ricotta quenelle with radicchio and walnuts, on a slice of toasted pan brioche. Delicious, the delicate sweet, bitter and acidic flavours from the components, and the textures, just perfect to set our taste-buds on full alert.

The bread arrives:

Always home-made, always very good, this time also with some radicchio rolls, a first for us here.

And now, ladies and gentleman, we begin:

- Gran bollito misto.

An array of sauces is brought to the table. From left to right we have radish, fig mustard, ‘peverada’ (a traditional sauce from the region: breadcrumbs from bread toasted in the pan, bone marrow long cooked in stock, some stock itself), then a classic ‘salsa verde’ (green sauce, parsley based), and finally a tomato sauce. Even without waiting for the meat we unceremoniously begin to pick and try…Then…

A warm dish is brought to you with a potato and a stewed finely sliced onion. Taste-buds on even fuller alert.

Then the copper container…

…from which you yourself will pick the pieces to put in the plate. It’s nice once in a while to eat stuff in the order that you bloody prefer, each piece with the sauce you bloody want, with nobody hovering to tell you how you must eat.

Let’s open it:

We have a chicken leg, two tongues cooked in two ways, (‘salmistrata’, kind of corned veal tongue salt cured; and 'normal'), both veal and beef muscle, and ‘cotechino’ (home-made of course, no industrial shit here). The ox-tail which is normally there is missing today, and has been replaced by the second tongue. Now, let’s just shut up and eat, this is fabulous!

In the end, we certainly do have the space for the dessert of this set menu

- Budino di pane e mela Golden con caramello di Schiava Nera (Steamed bread and apple pudding with Schiava Nera (a local wine) caramel).

Excellent, this choice of a dessert characterised by local ingredients and rooted in tradition, in keeping with the rest of the menu. But Menestrina is a missed chef patissiere, his desserts always so intense and balanced, and this dessert is truly on a different plane. Just look at the presentation.

All was accompanied by a local wine, a Rebo at €17 (more on the Rebo wine at some point) and water, a full litre bottle of it, that extinct animal, at €2.50. The whole menu (all you’ve seen above) cost…€23. Yes. Including proper tablecloths, amuse bouche, bread, smiling service and ambience. This must be the best quality for money on earth (we think of St. John’s in London, of all the rave around it, and the star, and the prices, and we somehow feel that the world is crazy).

We love, love meat. And so this was for us a fabulous treat, a vigorous interpretation of popular heartiness, but with refinement of presentation, a kaleidoscope of flavours and attention to cooking and the choice of cuts and materials (true, this last feat facilitated by a dad in the butcher’s trade who gives a willing hand!) that reveal the true chef behind the stoves. For this year, we think bollito is gone: Spring is upon us (even if here in Trentino we were under snow yesterday). What will Chef Michele be putting on the new season menu? Be sure we will find out…

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BA8

The day: 17th January 2009
The place: BA flight 8 Narita to Heathrow
The venue: Club World
The food: modern British with some fusion
The drinks: carefully chosen both French and New World, bottomless glass


Well, you know now we spent some very exciting times in Tokio. Of course, we had to get to and fro somehow, and this time we did it in style… Enter the Club Class of British Airways flight BA8 from Narita airport.

Admittedly, by the time you get to your seat you might already be thoroughly stuffed, or thoroughly drunk (or both!) after a visit to the reserved Departure lounge (the one in Narita airport not remotely as pampering as the new BA Lounges at Heathrow Terminal 5). But behave, and be assured that they will pamper you properly on the flight.

In a feat of amazing restraint we skip the free champagne (come on, how many people do you know who refuse free champagne?). So we begin with a starter of

- Peppered salmon and yazu dressing:

This is the first surprise: the salmon is plump, moist, tender, very flavoursome and perfectly seasoned… call us uncouth country bumpkins, but we were not expecting this kind of quality 30,000 miles above sea level. The accompanying cous cous is ok, as is the dressing, but to be fair these are rather unmemorable especially when compared to the fish.

Next, our mains of

- Bamboo shoots and kinome yaki with season vegetables;
- Chilled seafood salad with creamy lime dressing




We went for bamboo because we wanted something light. This is precisely what we got. This was overall a very delicate, balanced dish (maybe too delicate) but it was very welcome after our Japanese guzzling, and even the vegetables (some of which rather unseasonable, e.g. peppers) were grilled skilfully, the bamboo shoot notably offering chunky interest on the palate, and with the steamed rice possibly the best accomplished part of the dish.
The seafood salad was positively good. Fat prawns and scallops very fresh and chunky with just the right bite, in a well varied salad of tender greens. Definitely very pleasant.
To conclude, some fresh fruit and cheeses (our by then saint-like restraint continued and we skipped the Port), here a mature cheddar and a blue:

Nice, though served a bit too cold (hey, we are not complaining, given where we are).

Excellent chocolates to finish, and the usual tea, coffe and so on. All washed over with some unlimited Crozes Hermitage La Petite Ruche 2007, M. Chapoutier, preceded by some Pouilly-Fume' Les Pierres Blanches 2007, Domaine Masson-Blondelet, both of which were good.

The bill? Let's say this will set you back quite a bit more than our £100 rule...but it is well worth it. Especially if it is not you who picks up the tab!

Service was smiling, sufficiently cheerful to alleviate our ridiculous fear of flying, helpful and efficient throughout. Our impression is that BA really put a lot of effort and intelligence into the catering part of its operation (apparently unlike some of its rivals). Its menus and wine lists are designed with the help of top experts, such as Jancis Robinson for wines and Michel Roux and Vineet Bhatia for food, just to name some. Our food experience on the flight from London was, if anything, even better.

We are real idiots: we don't even get paid to say all this.

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