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Orso
I ALWAYS feel rather hesitant about going to Italian restaurants. This is partly because, having lived for a short while in Italy, I am painfully aware how many restaurants here fall short of the right real thing. Nostalgia is difficult to live up to. But it is also due to the fact that Italian food translates badly into the more self- conscious language of urban menu- planners.
Not a restaurant that one could exactly call unselfconscious, Orso (27 Wellington Street, WC2, 01 240 5269) has produced extreme, and conflicting, reactions. It has been praised for providing genuine north Italian home-cooking and been con- demned for fashionable fraudulence. I remained unconvinced by both views: the first time I went (last August) I found it unremarkable but worth persisting with; further visits made more impression. Owned by Joe Allen, it is very much an American Italian: none of the Mario and Franco legacy here. Spacious, design- conscious (pastel walls relieved by black and white showbiz prints) and expensive, this is obviously for the plume-flaunting, cocktail-drinking set. The food redeems it. The first test of any Italian restaurant is its pasta. And although £5 for a plate of it is exorbitant, it is very good here. I go time and time again for their rigatoni superlativi corrugated tubular pasta with broccoli, Parma ham, onions, green olives and cap- ers — superlativi indeed. Their menu changes, but starters (at an average price of £4) always include salads, soups and slightly swanky versions of traditional favourites. The trouble is, they're not at all consistent. The arugula (normally called rocket), parma ham and parmesan salad is excellent; the soft green leaves, shards of parmesan and strips of cat's-tongue-pink !lam are an inspiring combination. But the warm' salad of spinach, new potatoes, parma ham and shallots with balsamic vinegar is to be avoided. Drenched with a suspiciously sharp dressing, it was not merely warm but so hot it was steaming and a bit like eating an astringent facial treatment. One of their star turns is their pizzette or 'little pizzas': the Bath-Oliver crisp bases are a welcome relief after the doughy messes all too often served up now. There's a choice of four coverings; my eccentric preference is for the gorgonzola and parma ham one. Fidelity to the Italian way of eating means that there is always some good, unmessed-up fish on the menu — baked brill with lemon, grilled red mullet and calamari, monkfish with roasted peppers. Meat-eaters can stick to old restaurant favourites like calves' liver (usually alla Veneziana — with onions and a rich gravy — though I prefer it plain, with sage or perhaps thyme), veal escalopes with mar- sala, or chicken with lemon. Or try some rustic treats — roast woodcock with pine- nuts and polenta (though the first time I had this it came nearly raw and I had to send it back) or a robust and beautiful lamb and black olive stew. At £1.50 a (small) portion, vegetables are monstrous- ly over-priced. If the roast potatoes with rosemary and garlic are on when you go, don't try to resist. No one can roast pota- toes better than the Italians. I have never made much of a dent in their pudding menu, but there's always fruit, ice-cream and a sorbet and some rather gungy cakes. I would prefer, by far, to have Vin Santo, headily sweet dessert wine (I don't know if it really is used as communion wine in Italy) with lozenge- shaped, almond-studded biscuits which you quite properly dunk. The couple of cheeses they always seem to have on the menu are fresh parmesan (best eaten like this) and a fabulously rich torta of gorgon- zola and mascarpone. Neither is cheap at £2.50; nor is their wine list, though it's a well-chosen one. The Gattinara (£11.50) is my choice from the reds; of the whites, I normally go for the Vernaccia di San Gimignano at £9.
Transatlantic types compare Covent Garden's Orso unfavourably with its New York model (which, an American told me recently, is 'a real scene' — this is merely a restaurant) but I like it. Prices are high, about £22 a head, so it is mostly for expense-account diners (though they don't take credit cards). What I like about it is its tinkering, in a respectfully adventurous way, with an accepted culinary tradition. Orso may not be the sort of restaurant you'd find in Italy (where they are anyway much more conservative about food than the French) but neither is it a place to which you need hesitate to take an Italian.
Nigella Lawson
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