Time Out says
Thu Mar 15 2012
There’s nothing ‘cotidie’ – ‘everyday’, in Latin – about this smart new restaurant in Marylebone. It’s a special occasion sort of place where you’re likely to be plied with fat green olives, beautiful appetisers and unbidden side orders that would be the highlight of a meal in some other restaurants.
The service was smooth, the menu interesting and properly Italian. The leather banquettes look deeper than the Italian debt crisis. Our fellow diners were all dressed in either suits (the men) or taupe (the women); the couple at the table next to us appeared to be reenacting a Neil LaBute play. Yet it’s the food that really demands your attention.
Dishes range from the traditional – a Sardinian stew of fregola (large couscous) with shellfish, turmeric and saffron – to the modern. The traditional highlights included a dahl-like lentil stew served with the starters, and Borretane onions in balsamic vinegar. Those pickled onions were a world apart from supermarket jar versions: firm, distinctly flavoured, and pleasingly sour-sweet, the agrodolce flavour combo the Italians do so well.
The more modern dishes seemed to be more self-consciously fiddly and less confidently executed. We weren’t entirely convinced by the runny texture of lightly scrambled eggs served in their shells, but the added hazelnut and Gorgonzola flavours gave the flavour a lift, if making the texture disconcerting.
‘Courgette Medallions’ sounded like a porn star name from the mullet and Corvette era, and the slivers of zucchini fried and served with a raspberry vinegar dressing and sun-dried tomatoes also suggested a 1980s timewarp. But we couldn’t fault another dish of perfectly-cooked beef sirloin, served with chard and béarnaise; or any detail of the ingredient quality in the entire meal.
Even if your appetite’s starting to wane, keep something in reserve for the desserts. The iced chocolate cake and the chef’s signature ‘Machiavelli’ dessert were beautiful as well as a delight to the other senses. Oh, and then there are the petits fours, brought even if you’re not ordering coffee; these could be a dessert course in themselves.
If you’ve got a light appetite, order less than you think you want. There should still be enough palate-teasers, appetisers, inter-courses, and post-prandial pasticceria to make you feel as if you’ve just been bunga-bungaed.
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