Don’t you hate it when you arrive at a restaurant, and feel you’ve invaded some sort of private party? That’s rather how we felt the Saturday lunchtime we visited this new Chelsea Italian. The only other table populated when we arrived was full of espresso-drinking friends-of-the-management doing extravagantly Italian things, like tossing their long blonde hair, caressing their bejewelled mobiles and – inevitably – holding simultaneous conversations with absent friends.
We had lots of time to study these phenomena, as our food took an age to come. No explanation was offered, and the delay was all the more mystifying as the menu – despite the place’s pink ‘n black, cocktail-bar-contemporary décor – is so simple and old-fashioned as to seem almost retro.
When the food did finally come, it was consistently good, and prettily presented, if arguably on the substantial side for a part of town where some people’s idea of a good time is to play with a lettuce leaf.
The service might have been slow (and a touch uncommunicative) but its heart seemed to be in the right place. And the manager did, in the end, apologise for our wait in the most tangible form: with a big platter of really very good classic Italian desserts. After that, you can forgive anything. Well, almost. A top espresso too.
As we left, the tightly-packed tables were filling up with more people, all of whom give the impression of being further friends of the management and/or of the (pretty) staff. The later arrivals, though, did seem to be there to eat, rather than just pose. Let’s just hope they didn’t mind if their lunch didn’t end till late-afternoon.
