Osteria Stecca

Chef-proprietor Stefano Stecca was in jovial mood on the evening we visited. As charismatic as a much younger (and bearded) Silvio Berlusconi, he was clearly delighted to be meeting and greeting most of his customers in person. In fact, he was spending more time arranging complementary glasses of sparkling prosecco than supervising the kitchen. But Stecca has good reason to be jolly, and confident of his kitchen. Stecca knows this neighbourhood well, he knows his customers and he knows what they like to eat. He used to be the chef on this very site when the restaurant was called Rosmarino, back in 2001when it won Time Out's Eating & Drinking Award as Best Local Restaurant. Then Stecca moved on, Rosmarino changed chef as frequently as Italy changes governments and eventually closed. After intervening years spent working at Brunelli - an expensive Knightsbridge hotel restaurant - Stecca's now moved back to Blenheim Terrace, a cul-de-sac that boasts more flash motors than the players' car park at AC Milan. This time, Stecca runs the show. Rather than restricting himself to one region of Italy, he covers classic dishes from the north and south, often with a modern interpretation. For example, the Piedmontese dish vitello tonato is here served on a square plate with the thin slices of cold veal arranged like sashimi, then drizzled with the mayonnaise/tuna sauce; it looks more like a Japanese dish, garnished with a little mound of apple slivers. Most importantly, the dishes still taste properly Italian. A black plate showed off a risotto of carnaroli rice dyed green with watercress, the texture slightly firmer than the soupy Venetian style, which Italians call all'onda - 'like a wave' (a wave in the sea, that is, not a dodgy politician's wave). Cooked slowly and continuously stirred, it had a perect texture: the rice had kept its shape and had not turned into a mush. All it needed was a knob of gorgonzola cheese, and the result was a risotto that required no further embellishment. Stecca's kitchen also seem to be dab hands with pasta and fish, if our two dishes of sea bass and linguine were anything to go by. The crisp skin of the firm sea bass flesh was topped with tiny capers and simply seasoned; it needed little more than this, but was served with mezzaluna of overly sweet fennel that had been cooked in butter with too much sugar. And a lobster linguine (£5 supplement to the £17 for two courses) was nicely al dente, slathered in a sauce that was perhaps a bit too heavy on the tomato. Both good dishes, but they might have been better if they were more savoury, less sweet. In the Italian way service was hospitable if somewhat disorganised, with one wine list shared among many tables. But when you get hold of it, the list does the cooking justice with 80 or so styles of wines from across Italy at all price points, though cost seemed no obstacle to the diners around us. Osteria Stecca is in a smart neighbourhood and seems to attract older, wealthier diners, yet it feels lively and lacks pretension. And Stecca's return to St John's Wood seems to be being greeted with considerably more enthusiasm than Berlusconi's return to a third term of political power in Italy.

http://www.timeout.com/london/restaurants/12541.html