An “improved” Marylebone Italian, whose “simple and delicious” dishes are generally reckoned to be worth their “high” prices; the service can be a touch “variable”, though, and the “noisy” basement setting is something of a drawback.
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It’s almost better not to know that this new Italian restaurant is owned by Arjun Waney, whose Zuma-based empire also incorporates discreet Mayfair celeb-magnet La Petite Maison. The newcomer –...
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Press Reviews (5)
John Walsh (6th July 2009)
Food 2/5 stars, Ambience 2/5 stars, Service 3/5 stars
The review of this Marylebone Italian gets off to a good start; the bar upstairs is “tiny and cute” and “the welcome from the staff is pure theatre”. Unfortunately, the dining room is in an “oddly shaped basement” with “austere” décor. The “predictable” menu and cooking style are “that of an old-fashioned trattoria”, and the critic feels “annoyed with the place” for believing “it’s something far more special”, and charging as if it were.
Zoe Williams (6th July 2009)
7/10
The critic self-summarises her experience at this Marylebone trattoria: “[a] perfectly nice, mainly excellent value, genuine, delicious Italian restaurant, in the throbbing epicentre of London, where you’d most expect to be ripped off. OK, so not all of it made me want to stand up and cheer, but some of it did.”
Giles Coren (15th June 2009)
5.5/10
The critic has a very up-and-down experience at this new Marylebone Italian. Or rather, he goes twice – always a mistake! – and finds the two experiences difficult to reconcile.
Guy Dimond (29th May 2009)
4/6 stars
A desire for “bigger pepper grinders” is about the only criticism made of this new “neighbourhood trattoria”. The food “capture[s] all that’s good about Italian cooking: simple, fresh, great ingredients, no fuss”, the service “is Italian at its best: professional, well-drilled, brisk”, and the basement premises have “the sort of comfortable, low-lit interior that makes you want to uncork a Super Tuscan, buy an olive grove and start driving around on a Vespa.”
Terry Durack (11th May 2009)
13/20
This Marylebone newcomer “has been called more names than a Gordon Ramsay apprentice: Sol e Stella, La Spighetta, Giusto, and now Il Baretto”, says a critic who has clearly done his research. Although it’s owned by Arjun Waney (Zuma etc), he finds it “a simple place, pumping out fresh, colourful, crowd-pleasing Italian food in a smart-casual room to which you could just as happily take your kids or your colleagues”.
Il Baretto is the reincarnation of the sadly missed Giusto. The food is still Italian, but the décor is now smarter and the menu (and prices) more ambitious; ownership is now the same as the wildly successful Roka and Zuma. Most of the exposed brickwork has been covered with mirrors and black and white prints, but the wooden floor in a low-ceilinged basement space means the noise levels are high.
Few restaurants last more than a handful of years, yet Bibendum just notched up its 21st birthday. It helps that the kitchen was initially in the talented hands of Simon Hopkinson, and I was a regular here in the early days. Matthew Harris now heads the kitchen, but the place still benefits from the beautiful dining room, with its airy first floor space letting in plenty of natural light and the stained glass windows with the Michelin man showing the origin of the building as the Michelin tyre company headquarters dating from 1909. The Michelin theme is taken up in the shape of the flowers vases and even the water glasses.
John Walsh (6th July 2009)
Zoe Williams (6th July 2009)
Giles Coren (15th June 2009)
Guy Dimond (29th May 2009)
Terry Durack (11th May 2009)
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