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Casale Franco; Tiramisu'

"■\\.;„,.. NY. !Will IR

WHATEVER one thinks of the balance of power in Europe, it must be said that in England at least the sovereignty of the French kitchen has been superseded by the Italian. Time was when every new neigh- bourhood restaurant was a dinky little French bistro. But now when you're feel- ing too lazy to cook you don't pop round the corner for an unceremonious coq au yin or steak au poivre but for a plate of carpaccio and fashionably sauced pasta. For it's not simply that the trat's back: born-again Italian is dish of the day.

Casale Franco is one of the best of the new-wave local Italians. And it's about time that Islington, the Notting Hill of North London, only without its charm, had somewhere decent to eat. This pizzeria with extras is not very easy to find since it's hidden rather effectively down a little unnamed alleyway marked only by an overhanging Citroen sign just off Upper Street. Your best bet is to stand in Upper Street with your back to Cross Street and you'll see it, over the road, diagonally to your left.

Inside, urban chic meets rough-hewn rustic. Walls are exposed brick, hanging from them strings of pearly white garlic and the odd Leonardo poster. But no candle-stuck chianti bottles here: lighting comes from a serpentine tangle of copper wires, with light bulbs appended to them, which is artfully suspended from the ceil- ing. Although they do take reservations for lunch on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, until the upstairs room is open you have to take your chances in the evening in the busy downstairs dining-room.

Pizze are the big thing here: not the dense, doughy overpiled pies of chain store catering, but biscuit-crisp discs simply fla- voured, as they should be. Since the

bastard birth of designer pizza it has become fashionable to hold the less frilled forms in contempt. At least in Casale Franco they stick to the traditional Neapo- litan base. And faced with the real thing, nothing can beat a proper, plain pizza Margherita, just with tomato, mozzarella,

basil and fruity olive oil, in the tre colori of

the Italian flag and named in 1889 in honour of Queen Margherita of Savoy. If you want to branch out a bit, try the pizza San Daniele, a huge crusty plate of dough dressed with tomato, cheese and olives and covered with tissue-paper-thin slices of prosciutto.

The pizze are too filling to allow for pasta too, so you could start with an octopus and celery salad, the circled chunks of octopus as pinkly meaty as salmon, and then go on to a black and gleaming bowl of spaghetti with cuttlefish, garlicly pungent and inky. Main courses,

which are difficult to find room for, but are not anyway obligatory, comprise such

familiars as frittura di mare, battered and deep-fried fish, calves' liver with polenta and, one for the winter months really, fat-studded, peppery Italian sausages.

They make a bit of a hoo-ha about their ice creams, but I would ignore the fancier

confections and go for an affogato, bowlful

of whatever flavour ice cream you feel like with a cup of espresso poured over it.

Prices are not bad: I've twice eaten here for around £15 a head. House wine, at £6.50 a bottle, is respectable but unspec- tacular — stock Italian plonk, which tends towards the weak rather than the vinegary, and apart from the fact that music is sometimes played con troppo brio, a very pleasant place to have as your local and good enough to lure someone as hostile to North London as me to Islington.

Tiramisu in West Hampstead is not quite as raffinato. White walls, pictures on them

of sun-drenched, whitewashed and gar- denia-splodged villas, and a menu that is fussier in content and more ordinary in effect than Casale Franco's. A small but ingredient-cluttered list offers tagliatelle with artichokes, lobster risotto, a trend- conscious array of warm salads, swordfish, deep fried with batons of courgette and a bowl of agrodolce sauce, and, of course, a voluptuous and liqueur-heavy tiramisu, the chocolaty, creamy, soused-sponge pudding from which the restaurant takes its name.

With tip and a bottle of smooth and resonant Chianti at £13, the bill for two came to a not altogether welcome £57. Not really worth bothering with unless you live nearby and don't mind spending almost West End prices for what is an unexcep- tional but potentially improvable local.

Casale Franco: 134-137 Upper Street, London NI: tel 071-226 8994 Tiramisu: 327 West End Lane, London NW6: tel 071-433 1221

Nigella Lawson