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Theo Randall? Boy can he get a guy’s goat. He cooked for me and my wife once and she became so enamoured she insisted we name our unborn baby after him. (We didn’t.) The truth is I’m a little in love with him too, but less for his charm and more for the kind of cooking he does at his restaurant on Park Lane - one of my top picks for the best Italian food in London.
Alas that’s not what you get at his Earl’s Court offshoot. What you do get, though, is better-than-average Italian dishes without the chest-clutching prices of the flagship. I happily worked my way through some high-quality burrata with three types of (excellent) tomato, and then pappardelle benefiting from an oxtail ragu big on beefy depth. The only real bum note? The lemon tart – literally a pale imitation of Randall’s signature dessert.
The trick to Theo Randall’s cooking is that he brilliantly elevates simple Italian food. To purposefully bring it back down to earth here seems a shame, even if it does make it slightly more accessible. A nice enough place, but I doubt you’ll be branding babies in its honour anytime soon.