Mennula

Press Reviews (6)

• John Walsh (18th January 2010)
  Food 3/5 stars, Ambience 2/5 stars, Service 3/5 st
  
  This Fitzrovial Sicilian is “the kind of the place where you feel the chef is personally devoted to surprising and pleasing each of his customers”, says the critic. “Much care and intelligence has gone into planning a menu that combines granny's-recipe Italian dishes with clever new flavours. Not everything comes off as planned – but it won't just be the London-Sicilian foodie chapter that beats a path to Signor Busciglio's small but succulent eating-house in 2010. ”
• Giles Coren (11th January 2010)
  7
  
  The critic visits a new Fitzrovia Italian that’s been mainly positively reviewed elswhere, and find the food “mostly very good”, if with the occasional off-note. Plenty of “real Italian hospitality” too.
• Zoe Williams (11th January 2010)
  8/10
  
  The critic isn’t much impressed by the interior design at this on-the-cheap Italian newcomer in Fitzrovia, but “even at the bread course I realised it was all worth it”. There is the odd mishap, but generally the meal proclaims “gastro sure-footedness”.
• Toby Young (7th December 2009)
  15/20
  
  A new Fitzrovia Sicilian, that’s “as far as you can get from the family-style Italian restaurant in The Godfather”, and which was “three-quarters full” on the critic’s Tuesday lunchtime visit. The menu “has the smack of authenticity” and “[b]oth first courses are a great success”, as are the other dishes tasted. “[I]f you're after simple Sicilian food, lovingly prepared by a talented chef, this is the place to come.”
• Guy Dimond (3rd December 2009)
  4/5 stars
  
  The critic visits the new Italian restaurant on the site formerly called Passione, and finds a “rustic, regional, [and] refined” establishment that’s “self-consciously smarter than London’s other Sicilian restaurants” (Really? We recall the décor as Dulux-simple.) “Our visit was in the early days and some aspects of the service needed some smoothing out, but Mennula’s already showing great promise and reliably good cooking.”
• Fay Maschler (19th November 2009)
  4/5 stars
  
  The name may be “terrible”, but the critic hails this “great addition to the restaurants of Charlotte Street”, where the chef comes from Sicily… via Bolton (Lancs), the (once-celebrated) A-Z restaurant group, and Bloomsbury. “When you meet Busciglio he doesn’t sound Italian at all, but he looks and cooks the part.”