Evening Standard
“I’ve found my new favourite restaurant”, David Ellis panted, admitting that he felt “guilty cheating on The Ritz”.
Restaurateur Martin Kuczmarski’s follow-up to “London’s coolest restaurant”, Dover Street, this converted Hugo Boss store opposite Sloane Square station achieves an ideal combination of all the key elements of a hospitality venue – food, drinks, service, location, décor, atmosphere and more.
David found the American-Italian cooking perfect in its simplicity, gladdeningly familiar and wonderfully executed: “meatballs with ragu so rich it was more like the stew of a beef bourguignon; tortellini in an almost gelatinous chicken broth, the kind once marketed as a health tonic”; excellent veal Milanese and gamberi crudo; and chicken diavola with “potatoes most pub Sunday roasts could only dream of”.
David Ellis - 2025-12-14The Guardian
Grace Dent hailed the “beautiful bedlam” of restaurateur Martin (‘The Dover’) Kuczmarski’s “glitzy, sexy, mock-Italian trattoria” in Sloane Square – a place so superbly designed and operated, at once so cool and so laidback, that it “makes ordinary people feel temporarily like movie stars”.
The “rather old-school notion that restaurants should be pure, glamorous, fragrant escapism” rather overshadows the food here in Grace’s telling. With its margherita pizzas and tricolore chicken salads, the menu “veers at times into the realms of a Zizzi or a Spaghetti House”.
But the cooking, she concedes, is “actually pretty good”. Grace recommends the tonno tonnato, the tortellini in brood, and for the hungry a breaded veal Milanese on the bone which resembles “something Thor, God of Thunder, might have as a snack”.
Grace Dent - 2026-01-11Daily Mail
Tom Parker Bowles was equally enthusiastic about this “sumptuous, Milanese-style trattoria, all gleaming wood, butter-soft leather and barmen clad in white tuxedos”, which has “wamth, heart and soul” – and at prices that are “eminently civilised”.
And he was more impressed than Grace was by the cooking. If there were no real surprises on the menu, the zucchini fritti were not only “immaculately fried, gloriously crisp and light, but they’re finished with a spritz of vinegar. Genius.” “Equally exalted are the tortellini in brood… that broth is as fine as I’ve tasted anywhere, intense but not over salty…. I’d come back for these two dishes alone.”
To cap it all, “Martino’s already feels as if it’s been here for years, despite being open for just a few weeks”.
Tom Parker Bowles - 2026-01-11The Daily Telegraph
William Sitwell completed a January trifecta of rave reviews for Martino’s, whose “dazzling glamour” and traditional hospitality expertise (including an old-school booking system) made it “all you might dream of from an upmarket Italian joint”.
Like Tom, he noted that it seemed to arrive fully formed, “like it’s been there for decades”, and he likewise praised the cooking – including a “sublime” fettuccine Alfredo.
William Sitwell - 2026-01-11The Daily Telegraph
William Sitwell completed a January trifecta of rave reviews for Martino’s, whose “dazzling glamour” and traditional hospitality expertise (including an old-school booking system) made it “all you might dream of from an upmarket Italian joint”.
Like Tom, he noted that it seemed to arrive fully formed, “like it’s been there for decades”, and he likewise praised the cooking – including a “sublime” fettuccine Alfredo.
William Sitwell - 2026-01-11
