Eat Out London!Cafe Murano St James
Welcome to cafe murano, under the direction of Michelin starred chef Angela Hartnett.
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Cheese and Biscuits: Café Murano, St. James
food staff
So often in London, Italian food is a poor facsimile of the original, with all the form and colour of the real thing but none of the flavour.
I still enjoyed the Tagliolini at Café Murano - the pasta itself was particularly nice, all bouncy and firm and full of life - even if overall the dish didn't have quite as much going for it as the other place.
The ricotta was a little sloppy and the seasoning slightly subdued, but there are still worse ways of spending your money than on a plate of nice fresh home made pasta.
As I've said, London may never be the kind of town where you can pick a restaurant at random and be entitled to expect a great meal.
There are loads of great places to eat out in London, and despite all the rubbish and tourist traps and ripoff joints there are just enough spots like Café Murano to remind us that, all said and done, we have it pretty good here.
Cafe Murano St James's Restaurants
food
The days of Gordon Ramsay as the great white hope of British food may have passed, but the legacy lives on in his protégées, particularly Marcus Wareing, Jason Atherton and Angela Hartnett, who have honed the craft of producing critically-acclaimed, eternally-booked eateries across London.
Where Wareing is the architect of fine-dining chapels and Atherton seems to be supplanting Ramsay as the rising emperor of London‘s foodie scene, Hartnett‘s cooking was always a bit more, warm, understated, and prepared with both heart and precision.
This is patently the case with her newest venture, Café Murano, nestled in the quiet gentility of St James‘s.
The room channels one‘s attention to the cooking, which is homey Lombardian cuisine at its best, updated for the contemporary London palate.
Rosemary encrusted focaccia served with Planeta olive oil, ostensibly the world‘s best, was like sharing a kiss on the threshold of someone‘s house - an indicator of good things to follow - and follow they did.
Cafe Murano St James - London
WELCOME TO CAFE MURANO – Angela Hartnett’s Northern Italian restaurant in the heart of both St James’s and Covent Garden.
Our restaurants are relaxed and inviting and intended that you drop in and eat every day.
Café Murano St James's | Restaurants in St James', London
food menu
With the opening of Café Murano, proprietor Angela Hartnett has come full circle.
She has now returned with her fellow sous chef Samantha (Sam) Williams in the role of head chef.
The menu’s in equally reliable territory with Italian food drawn from the northern regions – so plenty of hearty pastas, red meat and fowl, truffles and funghi.
It’s deceptively simple food, but as the cuisine spans the coastal regions of Liguria and the Veneto and the plains and mountains of Emilia-Romagna and Lombardy, Williams comes unstuck with some of it; charred squash, gorgonzola and walnuts was unbalanced, and a wild boar fettuccine was overly dry.
Williams has a way to go before she reaches the standards of her mentor – let alone Hartnett's one-time mentor.