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IF I STOP by an unknown restaurant,' wrote the great French chef, Fernand Point, 'I always ask to shake hands with the cuisinier before the meal. I know that if he is thin, I will eat badly.' The Anton Mosi- manns of this world, all healthful body- tone, and the Marco Pierre Whites, who exhibit the hollow-eyed leanness of the poete maudit rather than the cheerful embonpoint of the gourmand, must have poor old Point turning like a rotisserie in his grave.
The cuisinier of the newly opened, already flourishing dell'Ugo might help restore his faith in the old order of things. Anthony Worrall-Thompson, a man given to wearing dandified silken waistcoats, has just the magnificent turn to fill them. Per- haps more cherubically plump than monu- mentally portly, he possesses a form that has become unfamiliar in the fashionable kitchen. He bustles, he directs, he bullies, he charms; as soon as one learns that he comes from a long line of actor-managers much is explained.
One of the things that explains his suc- cess is his sure sense of the age. Worrall- Thompson shapes and responds to fashion- able appetites. In the Eighties he brought us Ménage a Trois, whose menu dispensed with the rigours of courses and allowed for fork-pronging grazing. A few years ago, he opened 190 Queensgate, which went in for elegant stodge, and which he expanded into Bistrot 190, all beans and polenta and neo-Mediterranean brasserie fare. Dell'Ugo — named after his favourite olive oil — is rather on the same theme. On the site of the Braganza in Soho, dell'Ugo sat- isfies a long-established dream of his, to open the big place, a department store of a restaurant rather than a boutique.
The menu is the same whether you eat in the gaily raucous bistrot (Worrall-Thomp- son is keen on that final 't') or in the more grown-up dining-room on the floor above. The advantage of the dining-room is that you can look down on to the diners below, but it has a rather gloomy fustiness that is an ill match for the rambunctious food for which Worrall-Thompson has, these days, such a marked preference. The demands of the time have ensured a cheapish menu. This may well explain the lack of attention to decor. Amateurish rag-rolling and heavy-handed late Eighties ponciness would probably have cost a lot to do away with (I generously presume they were inherited rather than instigated by AW-T himself) and wasting money by throwing it all over the walls is not very 1990s.
While his menu is not expensive, it is extraordinarily expansive. There is a sub- stantial list of 'daily choices', three sections of starters, a main-course section entitled `Chargrilled', another 'One-pot Dining', as well as Salads, Pasta and Rice, Puddings and Cheeses. But just as I find buffets such a psychological drain, so I find this sort of menu detracts from rather than heightens one's anticipation of the food that is to fol- low. With so much to choose from, I always feel pessimistically bound to choose the wrong thing. The odds, after all, are against one. Based on my experience, I would give the diner a 50-50 chance of a hit, though I'm inclined to believe other people may be luckier. The rustic fish soup with rouille and croutons (£2.95 from the Daily Choice menu) was astringent on first taste, but without the depth to back it up, and the lamb shank with garlic and rosemary fla- geolet beans and olive oil mash (One-Pot Dining, £8.25) seemed to lack the verve of the same dish on Worrall-Thompson's Bistrot 190 menu. But when he's good, he's marvellous: taglierini with grilled squid, olive oil, garlic, chilli and parsley (£4.95) was a glorious tangle of flesh and pasta, peppery but comforting. My main course of flank steak with anchovy cream, with a cab- bage and potato cake, was, similarly, pure pleasure. I always used to cook a rough beef stew with anchovies, speck and corni- chons, but had to abandon it because so many people are odd about anchovies, so I felt a nostalgic attachment to this robust yet subtly flavoured dish.
For pudding, blackcurrant and cherry ice-cream was perfectly OK, the biscuits that accompanied it excellent, buttery and thin, and the Granny Smith tart with cinna- mon ice-cream out of this world. With, admittedly, only a glass of house red and a couple of bottles of water, the bill came to an encouragingly low £40-ish. Despite my initial dismay at the pages of menu, memo- ries of parts of it — sausages with white beans, duck liver with lumpy mash and crispy onions — lure me to return.
Dell'Ugo, 56 Frith Street, London WI; tel 071 734 8300
Nigella Lawson
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