Polpo

I took a client (who I am also friends with) here for lunch yesterday. It was on her recommendation because Tierra Brindisa was full and we really fancied tapas. What a find! Its looks like a cafe from the outside, when you enter its all shabby chic, bare brick walls and bare lighbulb lighting. There is a bar at the front with tables at the back, very canteen like and cosy. The decor won't be to everyone's taste but we liked it. The waiting staff are very friendly and quite kooky. The food was fabulous... mussells with clams in a garlicky sauce, small and melt in the mouth pieces of pork belly with hazlenuts, spinach with chilli and garlic, rosemary roated potatoes to die for to name but a few thigs we tried! The wine list is fine and very reasonably priced, You can also have half litre carafes if you dont want to sink a whole bottle.

Staff were busy but still managed to be attentive. Its a little noisy so if thats not your thing this is not the place for you.

The best thing was the bill, 2 carafes of chardonnay and so much food we could not finish it all, for £57! I would definately come here again (soon) and will recommend to friends

A smash hit in the making, this NYC-Downtown-chic Italian offers perfectly judged tapas/small-plate dishes in an atmosphere of old-style Soho conviviality. [read more]

Where the hype goes, discerning foodies often follow begrudgingly. Some don't want to miss the boat, some simply want to know what the fuss is about. Me? I just want a good feed.

Polpo is one of "those" places. A decent PR push saw the name get out there, and with a good concept and aggressive pricing, the place started to fill. Initially, lastminute reservations were hard to come by so I stayed away, preferring to fly by the seat of my pants and eat when hungry. However, the policy has changed to a first come first served policy and I made my way there tout de suite.

The concept certain appeals. Based on Venetian bacaro's (don't worry, I don't really know what one is either), Polpo serves small plates of Italian food, designed to be shared. I'm a big guy, but I don't mind sharing. In fact, to me, it's simply an invitation to over order.

With this said, we managed to nail the ordering, with us eating pretty much what we ordered. First up where plates of "cichetti", small mouth sized bites. The prosciutto and mozzarella was pleasant, as was the mortadella, walnut and gorgonzola. Tasty inoffensive food.

Next came a swathe of dishes, including an unctuous pumpkin risotto, a light and greaseless fritto misto and duck with peppercorns, amongst other things. The stand out dish for me was the pork belly with radicchio and hazelnuts, which was delicious and tender without feeling that "fatty" which the belly, mainly constituting of fat, can often be. The bitterness from the radicchio and the crunchy hazelnuts all added pleasing contrasts in flavours and textures. Rounded off with an Affogato al caffè, I was full, satisfied and rather happy.

As you can see from the inauspicious absence of photo's from this post, I struggled to take any pictures with clarity. Its dark, and I mean seriously dark. Had I been wielding my new Canon S90, I may have made a better attempt at it, but my poor Casio P&S just couldn't cope. Although crap for photography, the semi-darkness certainly lends itself to an intimate atmosphere, coupled with the proximity of your fellow diners. It is slightly cramped and very noisy because of it, but it gives the restaurant a really good atmosphere, something that many places would pay big bucks for.

Polpo is already doing a roaring trade, and seems to be bustling with business every night. It's early days for this venture but if our meal is anything to go by, it should do well. It's affordable, enjoyable, and now that they have dropped their reservation policy, convenient.

For our next dinner out whilst the kitchen undergoes renovation, last Tuesday I tried my luck at very late notice and managed to bag a table at Polpo for the very same evening. There had been a cancellation and I was booked in for 2 at 7:30, perfect.

Upon arrival however, I discovered the chap on the phone (who had been very polite) had booked me in for 7:30 on Friday. We were asked to wait at the bar, rammed with diners waiting to be seated (including Mark Hix and Stephen Terry), I was almost ready to admit defeat when owner Rusell Norman led us to a table. He left Caprice Holdings not long back and this is his bash at a solo venture. Phew.

I was pretty excited about trying this place so expectations were high. I liked the vibe immediately, relaxed, dark, romantic, buzzy and cool, the waiting staff have just the right amount of nonchalance, I loved it and couldn't wait to sample the dishes.

To begin with we sampled 3 starters, the idea is to order a series of small plates so the starters are all very reasonably priced, less than £3 and are very small, more like appetizers or nibbles really. We had fig and proscuitto, salt cod on polenta and an anchovy and chickpea crostini. We halved each and it was a good start indeed, it took us all of 2 minutes to devour the lot, worth noting that the polenta was perhaps a little on the dry side but the cod was excellent and the anchovy and chickpea was an interesting mix.

We had a selection of mains which were all served promptly as we finished with the starters beginning with the pork belly with radicchio and hazelnuts.

This was deliciously fatty, the meat succulent and incredibly flavoursome but I found it to be far too salty. The pairing of radicchio and hazelnut is rather masterful, the bitterness of the leaves and the crunch of the nuts working brilliantly to complement but not overpower the pork.

Apologies for the darkness of the pictures, in order to recreate that oh so Venetian atmos us bloggers must forgo a decent snap. Next up was the grilled sliced flank steak and mushrooms. Again I thought the meat was rather salty, not as much as the pork but still, seasoning seemed a bit heavy handed. The steak was nicely cooked with the mushrooms providing a nice contrast in texture on a bed of peppery rocket.

We also had a fine tomato and tapenade pizzetta, again high in salt but tapenade by it's nature is pretty salty. There were a scant few slices of tomato, I was underwhelmed by this to be honest, I thought the base would be crispier but it was in fact rather doughy. Not hugely memorable. The fish dish, mackerel tartare with horseradish and cucumber was great but perhaps a little under seasoned. I do not recall getting much horseradish in the dish but I thought in all it's a well conceived and fresh tasting plate of food. It looked pretty too, served alongside a flatbread.

We also had some beets, which were very good, and some parmesan and potato croquettas. These were nicely cheesy and crisp on the exterior with a fluffy piping hot centre. I'm yet to try a croqueta that beats those at Barrafina and these sadly did not, though they are valiant contenders.

We were tempted by desserts trying both the honey and walnut semifreddo, served cutely in a cone, and ciambella, a sponge cake covered in cream and a chocolate sauce. The 'sponge' (described as such by the waiter) was pretty dense and drier than your average sponge. The sauce was the great thing about this dish, delightfully rich and naughty.

I've read some other mixed reviews of Polpo but our experience was good overall. The closeness of the neighbouring tables did mean for uncomfortable maneuvering at times, particularly when toilet breaks were needed but, like the lighting, arguably it adds to the experience.

I will eat here again, but I'll leave it a couple of months in the hope that some of the teething problems are ironed out. With the booking mix up and the incredibly over salted meat, the evening was a tad disappointing however, some dishes were great, and it was excellent value for money, at under £30 each for all the food and a carafe of red.

Purely in terms of a concept perfectly pitched to the jaded, trend-chasing diners of London, Polpo appears to have everything going for it. You've tried tapas before, sure, haven't we all. But what's this - Italian "tapas", based on a Venetian bacaro - bitesize (often literally) portions of Italian food, each little more than a couple of quid and presented with a shockingly reasonable Italian wine list. The room is romantically lit (ie. you can barely see your hand in front of your face) but whereas in other restaurants this only serves to annoy, in Polpo it seems to fit with the clandestine Venetian style, like you've discovered a hidden gem of a bar near St. Mark's Square. You almost expect to hear the gentle lapping of the canals beneath the buzz of the crowd. Polpo has everything going for it, then. Everything that is, apart from the food.

First to disappoint were the arancini, deep-fried risotto balls. Bland in colour and taste, these weren't so much under seasoned as completely un-seasoned, and were like eating wet plaster of Paris. My crostini of chicken livers was just a slice of toasted baguette with what for all the world could pass as a supermarket paté - uniformly smooth, timid of flavour. And I wasn't just unlucky - the other crostini had similarly poor feedback from my friends at the table last night, a "horrible" cheap black olive in particular spoiling an otherwise OK salt fish and polenta offering.

The larger dishes were similarly cack-handed. Octopus salad had the opposite problem of the arancini, being unpleasantly salty; pork belly with raddicchio and hazelnuts had some fine flavours but the inedibly chewy rind on the meat itself was distracting; slow-roast duck with tomatoes was boring, under seasoned yet again and with none of the flavoursome fat that duck can offer; only a dish of cuttlefish cooked in ink was worth the asking price - rich in flavour and balanced with a pleasant tang of the sea.

By this point we were becoming thoroughly dispirited but ploughed on gamely through another handful of boring dishes. Mussels and clams were yet again under seasoned, not very fresh, and a good half of the mussels were closed (albeit smashed apart). Turnip tops flavoured with chilli and garlic were not bad I suppose but at nearly £5 for the bit of the turnip (hardly an expensive vegetable anyway) you normally throw away is extracting the Michael somewhat. And I have here in my notes "Fennel, bobby beans, cobnuts" but can't for the life of me remember eating it. Which probably tells you all you need to know.

What's even more frustrating about my meal last night was how much I was looking forward to it, based on the opinion of many people whose opinions I implicitly trust. It's baffling - perhaps last night the usual chef was ill or otherwise unavailable, as I came away with the distinct impression nobody was tasting any of the food leaving the kitchens - nearly everything was incorrectly seasoned. But still, part of me really wants Polpo to work. Despite everything, it's still a gorgeous little spot for a very reasonably priced drink, and the service and welcome from all the staff was perfectly friendly and professional. Sort out the problems in the kitchen and you're onto a winner. Until then, I'm staying away.