Restaurants

Bertorelli’s experiment in 2006 with a ground-floor deli didn’t last, and now they’re back to doing what they do best: running restaurants. First a Charlotte Street institution and now part of a London chain, the Bertorelli HQ remains a respectable Italian. Both the ground-floor café and the restaurant upstairs are in the modern, clinical Italian style that is as standard now as raffia-wrapped Chianti bottles were in the 1970s. The menu shies away from the entirely obvious – although ‘creamy baby buffalo mozzarella with thinly sliced plum tomato, rocket, and basil and pine nut dressing’ is a tricolore pesto salad by any other name. Nonetheless, Bertorelli staples such as prawns with ginger and Marsala wine are distinctive, while a seasonal special of white asparagus with rocket and parmesan was a good simple opener, albeit not improved by a poached egg on top. There’s enough variety among the pastas to meet all tastes; seafood spaghetti was a fine example of its kind. Salmon with poppy-seed crust served on a tomato and aubergine caponata with green pea sauce was also well-executed. Desserts caused no surprises, and the wine list is helpfully laid out by style.

Time Out Eating & Drinking Guide 2008