NUMBER 21 Eccleston Street, or the restaurants on that site
in recent memory, serve us excellently as an illustration of the changing shape of fashion and taste. Just as the fortunes of the nation's taxi-drivers are said to reflect the state of the country's economy, so the Ciboure-that-was (black and white minimalist decor, with a menu that moved, in its time, from bourgeois bistro with frills to colour supp. nouvelle with cuisine grand'mere touches for ballast) and Olivo-that-is (all rough edges, Bologna train-station bustle, its walls daubed with egg-yolk yellow and deep inky blue, the colours of country pottery, and its menu rustically, picturesquely Italian) demon- strate, at once, what is considered modish and desirable by the country's diners-out. True, Olivo came on to the 'scene rather late in the day — the vogue for new-wave, rocket-and-bruschetta Italian must be limp- ing to a close now — but all the more fair- ly, then, could one say that it is responding to the fashionable taste rather than shaping it.
The food itself scarcely needs elabora- tion: its trajectory has been charted enough in these pages for knowledge of it to be safely assumed. But the lack of originality of Olivo's menu is no bad thing. 'Make It New' is a dangerous slogan for those who run restaurants, or more pointedly for those who visit them. And maybe anyway to call it unoriginal is to deliver an unde- served slur: the fare here is resolutely not samey, Photo-fit stuff, nor a parodic exam- ple of the modish menu. Mauro Sanna, who owns and runs the joint, is from the south (although his chef, Giorgio LocateIli, is from the more fashionable north) and his influence is detectable. Two of the starters on the lunch menu when I went were from the south. One, a caponata with chunks of aubergine fried with garlic and onion and veal-coloured cubes of fresh juicy tuna, like 'With a bit of luck he'll be mugged!' an aromatic stew without sauce except for the garlic oil which seeped from it, and the other a bowl of malloreddus, the gnocchi sardi which aren't really gnocchi but small pasta shapes, ridged and curled like little durum wheat pupae, in, as is traditional, a tomato and crumbled sausage sauce. The caponata was perfection; the pasta on the so-whatish side.
We moved northwards for the next course. I had eyed the fish on the next-door table and knew I would order it before I'd even seen the menu. My instinctive greed did not fail me. It was rapturous: a plate of pebbly lentils on which sat a griddled and crisped piece of cod, which they described aS baccalii, but was, rather, merluzzo — in other words, just fresh, not salted and dried. I was too taken with this, I'm afraid, to pay enough attention to the pile of thinly sliced kidneys and polenta at fork's length from me. But it, too, satisfied.
Portions are not large for which, being the sort of greedy pig who eats whatever's in front of her regardless of appetite, I'm always grateful. Better still, I'd say they're big enough to mean that pudding is not strictly necessary but not so big to make one feel excessive for having one. I have no particular weakness for chocolate, and have, in fact, something approximating a general disinclination to eat it, but Olivo's chocolate and almond tart could almost win me round. It was a hardly sweet wedge of nubbly chocolate, its texture beguiling, somewhere between mousse and biscuit. A bowl of figs, spiked with shards of cinna- mon and drenched in syrupy-red dessert wine, was warm and soothing and almost medicinally aromatic.
My inability to drink much, or with much pleasure, these days means I cannot report usefully from the wine list, except to say that the house red, a Montepulciano, was good and velvety and the bottle of Gavi di Gavi topping the list of white wines made me wish I felt more bibulous. Lunch is extremely good value, with a two-course set menu for £.13, three courses for £15. Din- ner would be more expensive, but not, I'd have thought, alarmingly so.
Olivo: 21 Eccleston Street, London SWI; tel: 071 730 2505. Open lunch & dinner Monday to Friday and Saturday dinner.
Nigella Lawson
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