Osteria Vibrato, Soho

Lunch this particular Saturday started on a bit of a sad note. To get to the restaurant from Shaftesbury Avenue requires walking past the site of 10 Greek Street, once one of the most reliable restaurants in Soho, now sadly empty and forlorn. I know, it's 2026, lots of places are struggling and restaurants open and close all the time but I thought 10 Greek Street would be there forever, a kind of Soho stalwart bistro like Duck Soup or Antidote Wine Bar or Noble Rot, always available for a glass of something natural and some reasonably-priced small plates.

Anyway, life goes on, and after welcoming the lovely Impala into the Soho fold we also have Osteria Vibrato, a buzzy, already-popular little spot aiming to do for Italian food what Impala did for, well, whatever the cuisine at Impala is. After squeezing onto our table (the food may be Italian but the distance between the tables is very Parisian Bistro) I was presented with an ice-cold martini in a pretty little frozen glass, so on the martini front at least they're doing everything right.

Decent sourdough, crispbreads and olives were also very nice - a surprising amount of flavour from the bread/crackers, and the miniature olives were little flavour bombs. These were all unordered, but weren't free - a cover charge of £3pp appeared on the bill later, which is either fine or a minor irritant depending on your point of view. Would an experience at Osteria Vibrato be measurably worse if guests were allowed to skip the bread and olives? It's hard to imagine it would.

Sicilian red prawns were the first menu item to arrive. Drizzled in excellent olive oil (you really do notice the quality of some of the ingredients at Osteria Vibrato), they were sweet and salty and although perhaps not the very best prawns I've ever had in my life, could certainly have a shot at the top 10. They were also £4 each (£16 for 4) for these fairly small beasties so I made absolutely sure there was no head juice left un-snaffled to get my money's worth.

Sardines stuffed with pine nuts and raisins felt like the kind of dish the ancient Romans would have enjoyed, although from what I can gather from my ancient Roman food history they would have eaten the whole fish - bones, tails and all - which we didn't do. Still a fun little dish though.

If this doesn't look like a lot of sage and butter agnolotti for £28 then it's because they let us split two portions between the four of us, which was nice. I mean there's still a debate as to whether 6 agnolotti are worth £14 either, but they were certainly very well made and incredibly moreish.

Whole grilled sole was absolutely beautiful, and at £39 for a whole fish, actually noticeably better value than a lot of the other dishes. Simply cooked, drizzled with olive oil and capers and seasoned well, the meat lifted off the bone in satisfying meaty chunks, and in fact I've just noticed on the bill they only actually charged us £35 for this so it was even better value than I thought. If you go to Osteria Vibrato, if they have the sole, you should order it.

The mixed grill was, I'm told, nicely done too - chunks of lamb and veal (I think - I didn't try this one) cooked pink piled on top of roast potatoes.

And yes £95 is a lot for a T-bone steak but it was expertly cooked with a good, dark, crunchy char and lovely strong, smoky beef flavour.

Sides were enjoyable too - a pommes boulangère affair (sorry, patate al forno) with a nice crunchy top above rich, beef-stock soaked layered potato, and even a green salad was noticeable for a good sharp dressing and bold seasoning. Or maybe by that point we were just desperate for something that wasn't a giant slab of meat.

I have heard the Osteria Vibrato amaretti described variously as "a must-order" and "the best you'll ever have". So maybe they were having an off day or accidentally missed an ingredient because despite clearly being straight out of the oven they were distressingly dry, to the extent they were actually quite difficult to swallow. Or maybe real fresh Italian amaretti are supposed to taste like hot bags of sand. Either way, I'm not sure I can recommend them. Very odd.

Buckwheat, fig and almond cake was better though, as were a selection of house gelato and sorbets I forgot to take photos of. And credit where credit's due, staff were lovely and helpful and attentive, which more than made up for the occasional niggle I had with the food. It's clearly a very slick little operation and has definitely already got a fanbase - tables are quite hard to come by and the place was full this particular Saturday lunchtime.

Maybe I've just been spoiled recently with some literally flawless meals, and my standards were unreasonably high. It's perhaps just unfortunate timing on behalf of Osteria Vibrato and that, objectively, the place has a lot going for it. Don't get me wrong, it is very good, but I think at these prices (£136pp which included a rather cheeky 14% service charge) it should be something approaching great, and really only the sole reached that level. Still, they seem to be doing something right, as I say, as the place seems to be running almost full occupancy, so well done them. If I was going to spend that amount of money again, I'd go to Impala. But as my Grandma used to say, it wouldn't do if we were all the same, would it?

7/10

Chinzano, Liverpool

I have come to the conclusion that all Italian restaurants set in old railway arches are brilliant. I'm basing this assertion on the fact that all Italian restaurants set in old railway arches I've ever been to have been brilliant, and I see no reason to just write it off as a coincidence. First there was Archway in Battersea, where an ex-River Cafe team serve a menu of exciting Modern Italian food. Then the third (or fourth? Or fifth? I've lost count) branch of Bancone in Borough Market serving house made pasta to a way higher standard you have any right to expect from what is now essentially a chain. And now, underneath what I think is the abandoned track that once terminated at the grand Liverpool Exchange station, is Chinzano.

The first thing you'll notice about the place is how nicely spaced the tables are. We've become so accustomed to being squeezed into antisocially cramped restaurant environments, where you're very often closer to a stranger on the next table than your own +1, that for somewhere to have proper distances between guests is a genuinely pleasant surprise. I'm not necessarily blaming restaurants trying to maximise the return on their floorspace, and presumably the rent in L3 is not quite in the same ballpark as Farringdon or Marylebone, but the fact is that Chinzano probably could have shoehorned in a half a dozen more tables into this room, and that they haven't is to their credit.

Also to their credit is the use of a frozen glass to serve a negroni. Again, not every restaurant has the luxury of the freezer space to store glassware, but it's these little details that make the difference when you're otherwise just one of a multiple dozen places in Liverpool that can mix gin, Campari and vermouth together. And very nice it was too.

And so was everything else. This is an off-menu special of grilled peach panzanella that impressed in many different ways at once. Chunks of crunchy fried bread sat beneath a robustly seasoned collection of summer vegetables, all topped off with a bulb of burrata. It would have been a very enjoyable thing as a straightforward panzanella but the grilled peaches added a lovely sweet/smoky touch and the creamy burrata was clearly top quality.

Another off-menu special was this fried courgette flower stuffed with salt cod mousse, which came alongside a dollop of fantastic aioli. I've had this dish in various places and in various forms over the years, but I can't remember a version as successful as this, packing so much flavour into the seafood element and boasting a batter so light and delicate it was close to Japanese tempura.

Next, an extraordinary take on tuna crudo which ranks as one of the best things to have been done to raw fish I've enjoyed in a long time. Chunks of fresh tuna were bathed in a fantastic tomato and nduja dressing, lifting and highlighting the seafood without overwhelming it and providing an addictive punch of chilli while slices of cool radish on top provided some crunch. This was a bold, exciting and intelligent balance of textures, colours and flavours that demonstrates a kitchen right on top of their Italian food game.

Mains were no less impressive. Pork chop had a beautiful dark crust from the grill but was supremely tender and tasty within, and the hazelnut and potato dressing had all sorts of lovely textures and roasted nut flavours going on. It was also a hugely generous portion - you got plenty for your £26.

And crab taglioni was basically the perfect crab pasta dish - bouncy, moreish ribbons bound with enough brown meat to lend that earthy spritz of the sea, impossible not to love and yet another masterclass in Italian cooking.

Even truffle parmesan fries, a menu item perhaps not winning many authenticity points, were executed superbly - crunchy outside and creamy inside, staying crisp until the very bottom of the bowl, and topped with a healthy dollop of preserved black truffle and shaved parmesan. Oh, and I shouldn't forget to mention the service, which was as attentive and pleasant as you could want from a waiter who - certainly from behind - bore a striking resemblance to Hagrid from Harry Potter. I hope they don't mind me saying.

There's a whole other half of the menu that we didn't even try - Chinzano make a exciting sounding range of pizzas, with toppings like aged lamb ragu, or confit garlic and herb. And I'm sure they're lovely - and almost certainly worth a return visit - but that's for another time. Purely based on the primi and secondi we ordered, this buzzy little spot tucked away in a strange Victorian-industrial landscape north of the city deserves to be spoken about as one of the best Italian restaurants in the country never mind the North West - it really is that good. So you can add Chinzano to your list of must-visit restaurants today, and if you're ever wondering whether or not a particular Italian joint you may come across is worth your custom, check to see if it's in an old railway arch. If it is, you're probably onto a good thing.

9/10

I completely forgot to take a photo of the bill - I must have been enjoying myself too much - but with a bottle of nice organic white it came to £76pp, very reasonable for the level of cooking on offer.

Dalla, Hackney

The comparisons with my last post won't be immediately obvious, but within the context of their own chosen cuisines Josephine Bouchon and Dalla are doing rather similar things. Both have a very strong and educated sense of what it means to cook French or Italian food. Both do so with skill and flair, showcasing said cuisine at its very best. And - crucially - both leave you wondering why so few other places seem to be able to do this kind of thing so bloody well.

Very like the Chelsea place, as soon as you step inside Dalla you want to stay there. True, tables can be a little bit close together (this is also true of Josephine... sorry I'll stop talking about that restaurant now) but it's a bright, buzzy, attractive little spot that seems absolutely machine-tooled for its job as a neighbourhood restaurant. A tiny open kitchen in the corner fizzes with activity (and seems home to about twice as many chefs as looks comfortable) and the welcome from front of house couldn't be more, well, welcoming.

All of which would mean nothing if the food wasn't any good, but here's the thing - Dalla serves some of the best Italian food I've ever had in London, or in Italy. Dishes which look exciting enough on paper arrive as the absolute very best versions of themselves, and often with a little extra unexpected twist that pushes them to even further greatness. These are Cornish sardines, which I would have been happy enough with just simply grilled whole, but at Dalla they're meticulously deboned and served warm fresh off the grill with a lovely sharp garlic vinaigrette.

Steak tartare avoided many of the pitfalls of lesser versions by being properly seasoned and containing nice big chunks of soft lardo. But the unexpected twist in this dish was the addition of toasted walnuts - and very good walnuts too, not the horrid bitter ones you get in British supermarkets - providing an extra texture and buttery nuttiness. It all added up to one of the better raw beef dishes I've enjoyed in years.

Next up, a silky-smooth slice of excellent sheep's milk ricotta alongside a deeply-flavoured caponata. It still seems strange, as a meat-eater, describing a vegan dish (I mean the caponata, not the cheese of course) as deeply-flavoured but as is often said, the best vegan dishes are vegan because they're supposed to be made like that, and aren't just vegetarian or meat or fish dishes with the dairy or protein taken out (or - worse - replaced with ultra-processed vegan alternatives). I am now a committed caponata fan.

I was torn on the next dish - not because it wasn't brilliant, because it was - but because I always have a problem with divided loyalties comparing the Italian style of anchovies on toast with the Catalan style with tomato and olive oil of holidays of my youth. But I suppose there's room for both in the world, and needless to say these were fantastically enjoyable, the thick layer of dairy matching the salty cured fish and neither element overpowering the other. But the twist towards greatness in this dish came in the form of a sprinkling of lemon zest, adding a fragrant, citrussy sweetness on the finish. Very clever stuff.

It should come as no surprise, then, given everything that had come before, that Dalla can also do world-class pasta. Tagliatelle with venison ragù was about as good as this dish gets (I imagine), the firm, fresh pasta topped with a deeply satisfying, gamey sauce studded with big satisfying chunks of the good stuff. It's one of the more baffling mysteries of Italian food in London that even in 2025 so few places can do a decent pasta dish (good pizza is everywhere, by comparison), but then I suppose that's all the more reason to celebrate when somewhere like Dalla comes along.

But if the ragù was excellent, this bowl of passatelli with lentils was close to life-changing. Lentils make a superb ingredient in a pasta dish, their vaguely soily, fatty texture binding together the pasta and the other ingredients to make hugely a satisfying bite. But the touch of genius here was the addition of red mullet broth, a powerfully-flavoured fish that can often, in the wrong hands, be a bit too fishy, but as a seafood stock used to infuse pasta and lentils made for heady, salty, seafood perfection. I've honestly never eaten anything quite like it.

Wikipedia tells me that saltimbocca is a dish of sage-and-prosciutto-wrapped veal, although thanks to London's seemingly endless capacity to never do what it's told I've had pigeon, guinea fowl and chicken versions of the dish in the past but never veal. Anyway I now have lemon sole saltimbocca to add to the list, and can confirm it works incredibly well, the dense, meaty flesh of the (again, meticulously deboned) sole seasoned and complexified by the ham and sage. Maybe one day I'll try the veal. I bet it won't be as good.

We never wanted lunch to end, and so ordered three out of the four sweets on offer. Apple tart was warm and soft and moist, with generous chunks of sweet poached apple and a nice sharp dollop of crème fraîche (or whatever the Italian equivalent is, sorry Italians) on the side.

Tiramisu I didn't try - I can't do caffeine - but I mean it looks alright doesn't it?

But pannacotta - so often a lazy pub dessert afterthought - was genuinely great, so ethereally light it practically disappeared in the mouth leaving a heady note of vanilla-flecked dairy and lovely sharp-sweet saba (a syrupy liquid made from grape must). I thought pannacotta was boring - it just turned out I'd never had it before.

If I was finding it hard to criticize anything about Dalla, then that wasn't about to change with the arrival of the bill. With plenty of wine, more than enough food - all of which was unimprovable - and including service that never put a foot wrong, the cost per person was £72. I'm so used to being shocked at the price of eating out in London in a bad way that the pleasant surprise of being nearly £30 under my contactless limit was a rare and precious thing indeed.

So it's no surprise that tables at Dalla are as rare as Italian speciality-breed hen's teeth. It takes a lot to stand out in a city that eats as well so regularly as London and yet this unassuming little bistro in a bleak, graffiti-strewn stretch of Hackney already feels like the future - an intelligent, flatteringly accessible take on modern Italian food that has deference to tradition and yet the confidence to stamp their own personality on dishes that are never less than great, and often extraordinary. It is, in short and in all probability, one of the best restaurants in town. What else do you need to know? Just go.

10/10

Little Cellars, Camberwell

Having enjoyed the original Peckham Cellars very much, I eagerly jumped on a very kind invitation to their new Camberwell offshoot. Little Cellars is aptly named - there's a couple of high tables for 6 in the middle of the room and 8 lower seats arranged looking out of the two downstairs windows - and I'm afraid when I saw how closely to each other complete strangers were expected to sit, my heart did sink a bit. But whatever you might think about communal seating, it's really the only way a venue this size is going to make any money without charging double for the menu, and actually in the end we were perfectly happy occupying a couple of seats at the end of a row, looking out onto Camberwell High Street.

The menu at Little Cellars is, much like its sister restaurant, an unbeatable mix of small plates served at very reasonable prices, and the occasional eye-catching premium larger dish for those who fancy splashing out. So, for example, we have these lovely cheddar beignets, hot out of the fryer, a crisp, greaseless crust giving way to an ethereally light, fluffy cheesey interior. This is a bit of pastry work worthy of the very best restaurants in town, and in fact were a lot nicer than the Comté gougères I had at a recent meal in Claridge's lobby restaurant. Yeah, I'm name-dropping. Get over it.

Charcuterie - all Italian - were of excellent quality and, at £10, a pretty generous portion for the money.

Terrine was way bigger than you had any right to expect for a measly £8, with plenty of interesting textures including just enough fat to loosen it in a very appealing way. If I'm going to be brutal, there wasn't quite enough salt in the mix, and as always seems to be the case, the restaurants that season all their dishes perfectly have salt and pepper on the table that you never use, and whenever you need extra seasoning there's none available. Still, this was still a very good terrine (and plenty of cornichons too).

But a dish that needed no extra seasoning - and in fact was unimprovable in every way - was the beef bourguignon. I'm always wary about ordering classic French dishes in British restaurants, because it's a style of cuisine that leaves absolutely no wiggle room. It has to be made perfectly, down to the last detail, or the whole house of cards comes falling down. This dish was absolutely perfect, from the tender chunks of melting beef shin, to the glazed baby carrots and shallots, to the thick, beefy red wine sauce studded with bacon. Underneath it all, a supremely smooth and buttery mash that, on its own as a side, would have been worth the trip to Camberwell alone. So now, one of my favourite dishes in London is served (sometimes, at least) in a little neighbourhood restaurant in Camberwell. I did not see that one coming.

Instead of the sweet desserts, which didn't really seem too exciting - I find panna cotta to be a dessert served by restaurants that don't like desserts - we had a cheese course. For £10 (there's that value again) we were served immaculately kept room-temperature Langres (always a winner), St Maure (a fruity and firm goat's) and - best of them all - Bleu de Causses. This is a cheese, rarely seen in the UK, matured in caves in the Roquefort style not in Roquefort but in the Gorges du Tarn, a magical part of the world where medieval villages cling to the side of precipitous stone cliffs while birds of prey soar and call overhead. If you ever get a chance to try Bleu de Causses - or indeed travel to the Gorges du Tarn - you should absolutely take it.

This was an invite, so we didn't see the bill, but I worked out with a couple of negronis to start and a couple of glasses of wine the bill would have come to about £50pp, which is a real bargain relative to what you might expect to pay for food of this standard somewhere more central. And yes, I had a couple of minor faults to point out but then that's just in the interests of documenting a more fully rounded experience - I still bounced away from the place high on the memory of that beef bourguignon and the cheeses.

We finished, and in fact began, our evening over the road at a charming - and rightly popular - little wine bar called Veraison wines, where the enthusiastic staff offered to keep a bottle of wine in the fridge between aperitifs and post-dinner. Already a fantastic place to eat and drink - I'm sure you already all know about Silk Road, Camberwell Arms, Forza Win, Stormbird, Theo's and the Crooked Well - Little Cellars is yet another reason to take the 171 bus from Elephant (or however you choose to travel, other transportation methods are available) and deserves to bring a whole new set of food lovers to the area. Now if you could please open in Battersea, you'd have my eternal gratitude.

9/10

I was invited to Little Cellars and didn't see a bill. Apologies - again - for the poor photos, I'm still on iPhone backup.

Archway, Battersea Park

Firstly, I have a confession to make. Many years ago I was very kindly treated to lunch at the River Café in Hammersmith, and I didn't like it. I think I was mainly intimidated - by the well-heeled crowd, the scale and the power of that vast dining room and open kitchen, and yes, by the prices, astronomical figures seemingly chosen only to be as shocking as possible to anyone who wasn't a multi-millionare. I gave it a rather grumpy review, then vowed never to return.

Years later, though, I did go back. The River Cafe staff are given very generous discounts from time to time, and encouraged to bring along anyone they want to share the fun. So, curious to see if they - or indeed I - had changed over the years, I found myself taking an afternoon off and joining a staffer friend for lunch.

And I had the time of my life. Everything was briliant, from the atmosphere in that cavernous room to the friendly but extremely capable staff to the exquisitely tasteful and seasonal wood-grilled Italian food, it seemed to be the kind of place where it would be impossible not to enjoy yourself unless you had a giant wood-fired chip on your shoulder, and I felt incredibly stupid for having denied myself it all these years. And if you're thinking "well, he would like it as he wasn't paying", guess what - as soon as that lunch was over I made myself another booking in a couple of weeks' time and paid in full. And I had the time of my life all over again.

So what's all this got to do with Archway? Well, most obviously, it was set up by ex-River Cafe staff, and if nothing else the Hammersmith place has a fantastic track record of sending out its alumni to propagate fantastic pasta around the country. We have them to thank for such names as Sonny Stores in Bristol, Trullo in Islington, and the sadly-departed Zucca in Bermondsey, although we do also have them to blame for Jamie Oliver so the less said about that the better. Anyway, now SW11 has its own little slice of Tuscany-on-the-Thames, and on a wet Wednesday evening I headed down an unlikely dark alleyway underneath Battersea Park station to see if it could carry on the noble tradition.

From an attractively short and straightforward menu, first to arrive were flatbreads, fresh out of a wood-fired oven, one topped with leeks soaked in "brown crab meat butter" (that's poetry right there) and another with gorgonzola, figs and honey. In both, the bread was the star - full of life and crunch and comfort - and though I obviously preferred the one topped with "brown crab meat butter" (I mean, duh), they were both very impressive bits of baking. A good start.

But it was with the arrival of the first pasta dish that Archway really flexed its River Café muscles. Cavatelli with beef ragu was - and I'm not using these words lightly - completely and utterly perfect. Perfect pasta with a perfect bite, a perfect tomato-red wine sauce studded with rich ground beef, perfectly seasoned, perfectly served. Yes, you'd hope a modern Italian restaurant with such a pedigree should be able to knock out a decent bowl of pasta but this was clearly a world class bit of cooking, astonishingly good.

Equally good - and so yes, perfect again - was pappardelle with mushrooms, brown butter and sage, another heavenly combination of bouncy fresh ribbons of pasta, seasonal funghi and heady herbs all soaked in a silky buttery sauce. As a not-very-good cook myself, and particularly when it comes to fresh pasta, I find it hard to pinpoint exactly what sets the good pasta restaurants apart from the great, apart from the fact that some make me pleasantly surprised, and some make me with giddy with utter joy. Archway fits in the latter group.

Fregola "risotto" (fregola are little balls of pasta a bit like tapioca, but nicer obviously) was the base for a selection of fresh clams and mussels studded with just enough chilli to provide and nice buzz above the seafood. There's something incredibly satisfying about eating a forkful of fregola soaked in salty seafood broth, lighter than a risotto but packing the same flavour punch. Dangerously moreish.

As possibly one of the finest pasta restaurants in the country, you really don't need another reason to visit the place. But I'm happy to report that a giant butterflied mackerel was a great demonstration of Archway's skill with grilled fish. The mackerel itself was immaculate, with a dark, crisp skin holding a good amount of fat next to soft and perfectly-timed flesh, and though it would have been nice to have crunchy cubes of toast instead of soggy tomato-bread, the "panzanella" salad dressing was otherwise very nice.

Desserts were generous of portion and of flavour. The strawberry creme brulee was my own favourite, topped with chunks of steeped berries so full of summer colour they practically glowed. And although to this day we couldn't quite decide every ingredient that formed the "torta della nonna" (and completely forgot to ask at the time), the custard filling was expertly balanced by a nice delicate pastry crust. And that's probably all you need to know.

In the interests of this post not turning into a completely two-dimensional gush-fest, I feel duty-bound to point out two things I didn't quite get at Archway. Firstly, the wine list is presented in a font so miniscule, and the lighting in the room was so "romantic", that nobody on our table could read it, so we ended up just pointing at a price and hoping for the best. Fortunately, the Archway's choice of house white is as tasteful as the rest of their operation, so all ended well. Secondly, there are two identical unmarked doors off the main dining room; one leads to the toilets, the other to a store cupboard and office. So there's a potential problem there.

But I am nitpicking, and the fact is there's very little to fault about Archway. Service was friendly and enthusiastic, the room is nicely proportioned (although I think some would find the tables a little too close together, depending on your elbow-room requirements) and the vast open kitchen, stretching back three times as far as the dining room is long, as far as I could gather, is a wonderful focal point and endlessly entertaining as you watch bits and pieces being moved in and out of the wood ovens and grills. And at £64pp it's even at the lower end of the London 2023 restaurant budget spectrum. But never mind all that - just go and eat the pasta. Everything else is a footnote.

9/10