19 Berkeley Street, Mayfair, London W1J 8ED www.bocconcinorestaurant.co.uk
A Russian owned Italian restaurant in Mayfair pleasantly suprises Nick with the quality of its food
Except I do actually want to try this one as it’s Italian cooking and I am a bit partial to pasta and pizza. You can generally keep the’secondi’, though because if I want steak with tomato sauce I can get it at home.
So up Berkeley Street to a big glassless front door that seems more to say Keep Out than whisper Come in, but I can peer through the side window and because someone has removed the floor, I can see the basement restaurant. It looks ok, and reasonably busy for early evening,
P and I are not Mayfair types; we scrub up pretty well but it’s clear to the trained eye that we are not rich. I have a Casio watch and I do not wear pointy shoes while P has good taste in clothes, but not expensive. The nice receptionist is warm and welcoming though, no hint of superiority even when we hand over a bag with P’s walking shoes inside, and so we descend the spiral staircase in good spirits.
There’s a big pizza oven on display, not wood fired sadly but gas-fired which is the next best thing as naked flames are important for pizza. The clientele are a mix of Middle Eastern people; older women in traditional clothes and young women in alarmingly revealing ones plus various monied types of the international variety, but no one brash enough to set my teeth on edge.
I have that rather odd creation of thinly sliced veal with tuna sauce that repels some people. It is hard to imagine why some chef back in the past thought they’d go together but they definitely do. It’s a rich mouthful, cut by large capers. Decent but not as good as some I’ve eaten.
We’re both falling over ourselves eating the focaccia with parmesan though. It’s not really what I would call focaccia, more super thin pizza with the crunch of carta di musica, but it is very good indeed. The umami buzz of the cheese working perfectly and that pizza oven obviously the hero here.
Pasta for mains because much as I do like a pizza if there is also pasta on the menu then it’s no contest; black ink spaghetti with calamari and bottarga is my choice, there’s something about Goth spaghetti that always attracts me, but then I’m a big Cure fan too.This comes in just the right quantity, a jet-black tangle of perfectly cooked pasta shot through with the salty roe. My own taste would have been for more of the bottarga but this was probably enough for most people and the shards of calamari were butter soft and there were plenty of them.
Ah yes greed and taste, Mayfair is often accused of having too much of one and not enough of the other but this restaurant is actually pretty good on both counts. The prices are really very reasonable for the location and the kitchen definitely knows how to cook pasta dishes.
So park your prejudices and you may just enjoy yourself.