You have to have a strong stomach to eat at Bocca di Luppo, a smart Italian restaurant on Archer Street in the heart of London’s West End. On this menu the devil is in the detail where the oddities of Italy’s farmyards are writ small among better know specialities. Tripe appears in a soup with borlotti beans and chard. A spiced sausage is served pink. There were roasted rabbits, partridges and deep fried sweetbreads. Boiled guinea fowl and battuto – raw minced young beef, seasoned with oil, salt and pepper, also feature. You would think pudding options would be free of farmyard odds and ends but not so. Sanguinaccio – a sweet pâté of pigs blood and chocolate sounded as gory as anything portrayed on the battlefield of the Somme in Trevor Nun’s brilliant adaptation of Birdsong playing opposite at the Comedy Theatre.
We had to eat and so we navigated the menu with care. We choose - Casonsei – a pasta filled with beetroot and poppy seeds. Delicious, skilfully made fresh pasta delicately coloured with saffron and filled with soft, sweet pink beetroot and poppy seeds. So far so good.
But pasta is always better with a lick rather than slick of rich sauce. Ours was surrounded by a veritable lake; cheese melded with cream and butter in such slippery, vast quantities it was hard to believe the chef had ever cooked for a healthy human being. It was difficult to appreciate the taste of beetroot or pick out the flavour of the sage in the sauce.
A beautifully cooked fennel, orange and red onion side order was a friendly companion for this very rich pasta dish.
We ordered scallops with gremolata which arrived garnished with rocket, and a serving of roast potatoes with chestnuts and rosemary. The scallops were delicious; sweet, tender and complemented perfectly by the gremolata.
With such a rich first course we ordered green walnuts and Muscat grapes to follow. The small grapes were delicately perfumed. Their texture more rambutan than vine. The walnuts – fresh and woody with an autumnal crunch redolent of fallen leaves in a crisp frost.
Wine - Orvieto - and coffee were good and so too was the lovely springy, tasty foccacia but adorned with too much oil.
Bocca di Lupo is not for the feint hearted and it is important to choose carefully with your guard up or else you may be surprised by farmyard horrors or too rich a meal. Order just a small dish of anything which may contain a creamy, buttery sauce. Not much on this menu for those who like delicate, fresh food. More gloriously cooked Italian vegetables, pulses and fish would be great.
5th October 2010