Eat Out London!Latium
Latium is one of best Italian restaurants for fine dining in central London serving regional Italian dishes with authentic Italian seasonal ingredients.
Latium, best Italian restaurant for dining in Central London
Latium is named after the southern Italian region of Lazio.
The restaurant celebrated its 10th anniversary in 2013; having opened to great critical acclaim in 2003, it quickly gained a loyal clientele and reputation as one of London’s finest independent Italian restaurants.
While the menu covers most regions of Italy, there is a particular emphasis on the cuisine of Lazio.
In true Italian style, he insists on preparing and making all his bread and pasta fresh each day, complemented only by the very best in seasonal British produce.
General Manager Luigi Gaudino manages the front-of-house team with a friendly, personal style, and brings a wealth of knowledge about Italian food and wine to the customer experience.
Reviews and related sites
Latium - London Restaurant Reviews | Hardens
Latium, 21 Berners Street, Marylebone, London, W1T 3LP - Italian ...
food
With a dish of olive oil.The A La Carte menu offers two courses for £26.50 or three for £29.50.
We skipped starters although there were some interesting items on the menu such as pig head terrine and courgette flowers filled with crab meat as well as more common Italian dishes such as Mozzarella with courgette and tomato.
Fish courses include roast monkfish with lentils, asparagus, capers and garlic leaves; pan-fried Cornish red mullet wrapped in basil leaves and grilled fillet of sword fish.
Meat dishes offered included sirloin, calf’s sweetbread, best end of lamb and slow cooked pork belly.I chose the risotto with fresh asparagus which had absolutely the right texture and colour but tasted a tad bland.
And I genuinely cannot remember what my companion chose – which is very unusual for me - so either the food was unmemorable or the conversation particularly good.There is also a specialist “Passion for ravioli” menu and a Simply Lunch menu (two courses for £15.50 and three for £19.50) – with borlotti beans and pasta soup, prawn and asparagus salad and parma ham with celery and pecorino cheese as starters and pesto tagliolini, grilled salmon with mashed potato and roast saddle of rabbit as mains.The web site states “Named after the southern Italian region of Lazio, Latium is owned by Chef Patron, Maurizio Morelli along with London restaurateur, Claudio Pulze.
Latium restaurant review 2008 June London | Italian Cuisine | food ...
food value desserts
Nibbles of a little fried rice ball with tomato and a cheese and tomato bread were a pleasant introduction, though a mini calzone with Parma ham and Mozzarela suffered from the calzone being rather too hard (13/20).
The restaurant goes to the trouble of making its own bread as well as the pasta, and the bread is worth their efforts: sun dried tomato rolls, olive rolls, good walnut and raisin bread and especially the crisp carta de musica Sardinian parchment bread were very capably made (15/20).
I began with a well presented salad of quail, prawns, artichoke and beetroot crisps with a beetroot dressing; this was offered with a little frisee lettuce.
Though the pasta was pleasant, the ravioli was resting in a clear broth flavoured with rocket, which did not help its texture, and the rocket flavour was too much for the delicate crab (13/20).
Tagliatelli with artichoke had good pasta but suffered from grey, rather tasteless artichokes and was a little dry; the ratio of pasta to sauce was not quite right (12/20).
Latium - London Restaurant Reviews | Hardens
Eating out: Latium, London W1 | Life and style | The Guardian
food drinks
As in most Italian restaurants in London, the dishes at Latium are constructed along Franco-British lines - ie, they have sauce and vegetables - rather than along Italian lines, where, in my experience, the main ingredients usually come naked to the plate - ie, without sauce, vegetables or decoration of any kind.
I wanted the full Italian experience: salad of veal tongue with celery and tuna sauce; selection of seafood ravioli with bottarga (dried tuna roe); stewed belly pork with radicchio, saffron mash and red wine sauce; and then cheese.
The slices of the former were as limp as a silk handkerchief, swathed in a green sauce in which the mild muskiness of tuna and the gentle freshness of celery were well matched.
His baby octopus salad was decent enough, with tender gastropod and frilly tentacles in a nice brown stew, but the escarole didn't have the bitterness to lift the dish, and I am not sure that ultra-refined chickpea purée quite sets the pulses racing.
All in all, I think Latium makes a decent enough addition to the list of regional Italian restaurants already in London.
Latium | Restaurants in Fitzrovia, London
food
An interesting menu betrayed a chef trying to move Italian food forward.
A lavish platter of nibbles kept us happy while we scanned the menu.
First courses of fiore de zucchini ripieno with Devon crab and broad bean sauce and pappardelle with wild boar ragout were both excellent.
Mains of slow-cooked pork belly with savoy cabbage and balsamic vinegar, and fillets of red mullet wrapped with basil and lardo de colonnato, with sun-dried tomatoes and buffalo mozzarella sauce were superb, and the latter exquisitely presented.