Little Italy

Press Reviews (2)

• Jay Rayner (30th January 2011)
  
  It is a cold, wet winter's lunchtime, but inside Little Italy on Soho's Frith Street there is palpable warmth which has nothing to do with central heating. It is the second Wednesday of the month and by tradition – a very new tradition, but a tradition all the same – that's the day the restaurant belongs to Elena Salvoni, as it once used to every day of the week. Elena, tiny, silver-haired, neatly dressed in black as ever, is the great Soho maître d', and has been for seven decades. Yes, seven – she is 90. She is a link to the kind of old Soho that people like me, who are nowhere near old enough to remember it, like to claim nostalgia for. She ran front of house at Café Bleu during the war, and then took over at the famed Bianchi's (on the site of what is now Little Italy),, moved to Escargot for another couple of decades before being given a berth at a restaurant named in her honour, Elena's L'Etoile in Charlotte Street.
• John Walsh (22nd January 2011)
  
  Remember the fuss that London foodies and critics made about Terroirs when it opened just off the Strand in 2008. Everyone loved its wine-bar vibe, its groovy "sharing plates", and its indescribably smelly vacherin mont d'or, which ponged out the basement. Well, the owners have moved on. Brawn is a high-concept, low-overheads place in Columbia Road, home of the flower market, and is currently the trendiest eating-house in town.