Artusi

Chalkboard menu of unfussy seasonal Mediterranean dishes and Italian wines in a pared-back setting.

artusi · Chalkboard menu of unfussy seasonal Mediterranean dishes and Italian wines in a pared-back setting.

http://artusi.co.uk

Artusi, restaurant review: This is a cushty addition to Del Boy's old ...

The two starters are ox tongue with salsa verde and octopus with potatoes and parsley.

There's more parsley on the plate with the octopus, served in the best Venetian style with soft-boiled potatoes, which have never been my thing frankly, but are fine here.

Of the two mains, the lamb shoulder with potatoes and bagna cauda (a hot garlic and anchovy dip originally from Piedmont in Italy) would be my firm second choice on a return trip.

To have an accompaniment of pretty unspectacular potatoes in both a starter and a main (if you have the octopus, too) seems rather perverse, and given how short the menu is, it would be better to go for some variation.

Though easily overcooked and polluted by too many distracting flavours, here it is just right and its moist, hot, tender white parcels go very well with a rich, ideally seasoned purée the colour of sunset over the Mediterranean.

Artusi, London SE15, restaurant review - Telegraph

By the time P and I got a table, I no longer cared what I thought of Artusi.

The starter choices may have presented a challenge to people who don’t like ox, but we’re omnivorous, and P, I sometimes think, ranks food by how difficult it would have been to kill.

P then had spaghetti with sardines and pine nuts (£10.50), which she said she could have made at home – a totally unfair criticism, since she can make everything at home.

Slow-roasted duck steals the show, served with peas, broad and runner beans (£15.95), while an updated cherry Bakewell stars almond ice cream rippled with cherry liqueur (£5) At this Royal Mile restaurant, chic in shades of brown and bronze, the kitchen impresses with classic dishes (lamb rump and baby gem, £17; pork belly with black pudding, £16.25), as well as delicious twists.

Try the cod with its bone-marrow crust (£17.65) The signature dish at this welcoming spot, a crab tart with a saffron and harissa dressing, wins so much praise you’d be mad to ignore it.

Artusi: restaurant review | Jay Rayner | Life and style | The Guardian

The restaurant had been described to me as an Italian and, in as much as there was a pasta and a risotto dish on the short menu, I could see this was so.

I made much of this in my review last year of the Peckham Refreshment Rooms: the way there are no longer no-go areas for restaurants, that surplus and plenty can sit side by side.

There's a slab of long-cooked pig's head that has been pressed and then fried until the meat is the colour of copper and rust, with a deep-green, blitzed salsa verde, so that you get soft meat and rough salty, acidic sauce and create a Jackson Pollock on the plate in the process.

It's also a neighbourhood restaurant, but one which punches well above its weight: pastas are made by hand shortly before service, and terrific cuts of meat and fish are grilled over charcoal (trullorestaurant.com) ■ The airline Blue Islands, which runs services from Guernsey and Jersey to London City has hired local Michelin-starred chef Shaun Rankin of the Ormer in St Helier to create a menu of "locally sourced" deli produce.

By landing at London City Airport the stuff will have flown a long way (blueislands.com) ■ Kitchen porters are often regarded as the lowest of the low in restaurants, even though the places would collapse without them.