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The day: 20th  August 2008, Dinner.
The place: Crown Plaza Hotel, London, The City
The venue: Refettorio
The food: Italian
The drinks: Rather short wine list, Italian, good range of prices and wines.

To an Italian, the word ‘refettorio’ does not exactly conjure up images of fine food, but rather the pap you get at the school canteen. However, this ‘refettorio’ is associated with the great Locatelli (whose book greets you right at the entrance), so we are hoping for something a little better…

This is a hotel restaurant, but we have had decent experiences in London with hotel restaurants (e.g. Addendum) and even excellent ones (Number Twelve). The set up is quite nice. This is the entrance
And beyond it a glorified ‘refettorio’, with a rather stark, dark wood environment. No tablecloths, only tables where the grease of the previous service cannot and has not completely disappeared. Some tables for two are tiny and crammed together, others (like ours) are much larger and better spaced. The luckiest couples of all get one of the tables for four in a recess.

The menu offers plain Italian food, e.g. among starters (around the £10 mark) Mosciame di tonno (air dried tuna) with green beans, dried tomatoes, oil and lemon (£9.50), among pasta dishes (around £10 as a starter and around £12 as a main) ‘Paccheri’ with shellfish tomatoes and garlic (i.e. ‘in guazzetto’), at £10/£12, and among mains (around £20) Bread crumbed lamb cutlets, mash salad, pan-fried courgettes and semolina gnocchi (£19.75). No set menus at the moment, but there will be a ‘porcini mushroom special menu’ in a little while, and there are a lot of small dishes (fried stuff, pickles, salami, cheeses etc…).

At this point we normally tell you ‘The bread arrives’. But this time:
The bread does not arrive.
The waitress asks you if you want to buy the bread basket. Pay £3.60 for bread? In an Italian restaurant? You must be joking!

We buy it:
It is not described to us (maybe it is described to non-Italians), anyway we note a Focaccia pugliese, a ciabatta, a non-descript brown and a non-descript light pink (we suppose with tomatoes but they were not detectable in flavour). We’ve had better, but also worse, although in the latter case, at least, we did not have to pay.

As usual, we refuse the regulation olive oil cup, but the waiter asks if we want balsamic vinegar instead. What kind?, we ask. ‘It is from Modena’, he replies. Wow. It may have been from Modena, but could have been from the nearest discount supermarket, thin and lacking sweetness. Rather than serving this ‘balsamic’ vinegar, better not to serve it at all, we think.

The amuse bouche does not arrive.
Nothing here is complimentary. Nothing. Rather, we get pressured to buy some side dishes. No.

For primi we choose:

- Prawn filled Ravioli with courgettes (£9.75)
- Courgette flower Risotto (£10)

The ravioli are good, well-presented, with a good pasta and generous, tasty filling. The tomato sauce underneath comes as a surprise and is very intense, but unfortunately very, very heavy handed in terms of grease.

We had waited for the customary twenty minutes to have the risotto prepared, but given the result it might have simply been a show, with the rice reheated at the last moment. It was an amorphous, solid mass lacking any bite. There were plenty of fats in there, including cheese, but not much flavour and even less courgette flowers (essentially a decoration rather than an ingredient). On the other hand the courgettes themselves were present, and they were in fact the best thing in this regrettable dish.

For mains we have:
- Pan fried red mullet with potato cake and Mediterranean sauce (£19.75)
- Chargrilled swordfish with cherry tomatoes and rocket salad (£16.75)

The mullet is tasty, cooked well (very crispy, very moist), and the ‘hash browns’ on which it rests are pleasant even if a little salty. But once again the condiment is greasily heavy-handed, leaving your mouth too oily. And the peppers are watery and tasteless.

The thin slices of swordfish are also cooked well, tender despite being cooked through, and of good quality. The dish overall however is really basic and inelegant in the extreme, with a bunch of raw tomatoes simply chopped in half and some rocket thrown in. It’s a non-dish, what you might get in the most rustic of trattorias (at a small fraction of the price).

We think we have seen enough of this place. We share one dessert:

- Pastiera with ice-cream (dessert of the day) (£ 6.50).

It’s very ‘low’, unusual but interesting (aside form the fact that it is half portion compared to what you get, e.g. here). A little too sweet, but OK.

With bread at £3.60 (bread!), a bottle of water at £3.80 (steep), and a white from Marche (Roncoglia) 2006 at £24, the total comes to around £106 (for a two course and a three course meal). So a three course meal for two would set you back £115 inclusive of service (but, as usual in these overpriced venues, we deploy our bill-destroying weapon, a 25% discount, allowing us to comfortably meet our £100 barrier).

The service has a problem here. The sommelier is of the kind who looks over his shoulder and doesn’t show the bottle while you are trying the wine (should take a course at Boka). The dishes always have to wait too long when they come out of the kitchen. We noticed a dish served when the cutlery wasn’t on the table.

The dishes at Refettorio are very basic indeed, but, alas, the prices are definitely not basic. The standards do not stray too far from mediocrity, and often there is some unpleasant heavy-handedness: that’s why even the tables felt greasy! Moreover, this restaurant completely lacks the sense of hospitality good Italian restaurants offer you. You get instead the sense of being in a passionless enterprise in which you are just a victim. In other words (just in case it wasn't clear), they skimp on everything but wait for you to open your wallet wide. While you won’t be poisoned here, you don’t come here for the cuisine. You might even get an occasional glimpse of good cooking (especially the fish), and find edible food as a background for a business conversation (unlike, for example at Brunello) at steep prices and provided you do not look for lightness: but we regret we cannot find a single positive reason (not value for money, not cuisine standards, not pampering) to recommend to anybody to go to Refettorio. Even considering its money-spinning function, we are slightly disconcerted that the great Locatelli wants to associate his name with this operation.

Gastropub, what a passion! Ever in search of the UK analogue of the good Italian trattoria, this time we focus on another East End place (after this and this and, in a sense, this), which has the dubious distinction of a raving review by the distinguished gastrocritic Fay Maschler.

As expected, the interior of the (long, spacious) room with the pub area at the end is casual, rustic, lively. And some interesting entertainers on the mezzanine:
There is also an upstairs room.

On the menu, starters go for £4.50-6.50 (e.g. whitebait at 4.50), with a mediterranean ‘meze’ tray to share at £12.50. Mains offer, for example, hearty choices such as Smoked haddock, spinach mash, poached egg, wholegrain mustard sauce at £11.50, or more delicate ones such as Pan Fried Seabass, new potatoes and sorrel sauce at £13.50. The most precious item is the New York strip at £16.50, the cheapest the pan-fried goat cheese with Portobello mushrooms and pine-nut salad at £8.50.

The bread does not arrive. You have to earn it.

Our selection of starters is
- Guinea fowl ballotine, salad, hazelnut dressing, bread (thank God, there is the bread!) (£5.50)
- Ham hock terrine, red onion marmalade, salad and bread (OK, we won’t starve) (£5.50)

These are both appealing dishes. The guinea fowl is palatable, well-made, with a buttery, sweet impression which is well-matched by the garnish, especially the pine-nuts. The bread, though essential for our survival, is forgettable, of the 'spineless' variety.
The terrine has a more decisive flavour, it is drier and more acidic, all in a pleasant way, and is very nicely contrasted by the excellent, sweet onion marmalade. A perfect dish for this type of venue. Mmh, this is looking good, might become a regular spot...

While we sip our beers (more on this story later), our mains arrive:

- Home-made fish cake, salad and fries (£9.50).
- Confit guinea fowl leg, braised red cabbage, fondant potato, thyme jus (£12.50)

The guinea fowl has been cooked too much and is much too salty, and is therefore also dry. Not TOO bad but disappointing after the good starters. The cabbage, in a heavy-handed sort of way, provides rustic pleasure on the palate, but the potato is rather dull.

In the fish cake once again we encounter a very unwelcome excess of salt. The chips are really pathetic: defrosted and tasteless, if you discount the abundant salt, that is. The salad has a condiment in it which is unsuitable for Italians, but we think also for French people (and yet we are told the chef is French), and surely for you Brits too! And the fish cake itself? It comes spreading a very pleasant smell, but the flavour doesn’t match the expectation thus created, and it is not moist, it is not hanging together as it should: the crust is rock solid, the interior limp and mushy. A poor dish, memories of the one we had at Creeler' longingly emerge.

Dear readers, we love you all but there is only so much we are willing to do for the blog…so prudence suggests we share a dessert.

- Banoffee pie with dark chocolate sauce (£4)

This was the last banoffee pie left, and we regret it hadn’t been eaten by somebody else. The portion is slightly ridiculous, the banana mousse (which in practice feels like a whipped cream with some banana flavour) is substandard, and the dough is seriously substandard, heavy and cardboard style (maybe bought in from a low quality outlet).

We drank some very interesting beers: a pint of Kolner (£4.00), a 330mls bottle of Meantime chocolate beer (£3.50) and a half pint of London stout (£?). For people like us who don't know much about beer, this in itself made the visit worthwhile. All in all, the experience for two cost just £44.85.

The service was cheerful and helpful, really an asset of L’Oasis. The culinary experience started really really well for a gastropub. A real pity, then, that it went progressively down the drain. Given that there was some skill and sensitivity on display in the starters, we are inclined to hope that the rest was due to an off night. For £44 one cannot ask for fine dining, but for some passion, care, and honest flavours, yes. They were not available on this occasion, but we feel we should be willing to give l’Oasis another try. Or maybe just for starters and a drink...

A really cold night in an empty London is the best time to brave the non-existent traffic and cross the city, heading to a recent Italian opening in Chelsea. At least this was the argument Woman used to persuade Man, hell-bent on trying Bocca di Lupo again (yes, you’ve guessed it, our fave was closed), to try this new joint. It is next door to Chelsea’s farmer’s market on a quiet residential street. The name means ‘garden’, and indeed they do have an outside garden which must be truly handsome in summer… but not with tonight’s subzero temperatures. The inside is stark whites, creams and black, with proper tablecloths and well spaced tables

We are totally alone: lucky we booked, or they might have closed for the night ;-)

Our young host is nice and kind, but there is an air akin to what we experienced at Trenta, with questions shouted down the stairs to the chef. OK, we’ll live with the trattoria style, Woman tries to cheer Man’s uncompromising I-told-you-so-mood. This is not helped by either the water (appearing in a half litre form, o dear!) nor the menu.

Indeed things were looking on the up when inspection of the carte revealed a short but interesting array of simple and varied dishes, and Man had already settled on the ‘Duck sauce home made potato gnocchi’ (£9 or £11, presumably depending on size) and ‘Home made cappellacci pasta with pumpkin, butter and sage’ (£11). But then disaster strikes, our gentle young host tells us that there has been a fault with their fridge, no fresh pasta is available. Man is looking darker and darker… Uhm, ever optimist Woman inquires about the provenance of the fish in the ‘Marinated swordfish and tuna with olive oil and thyme’, and, after a quick shout down the stairs, we are reassured that yes, the fish comes from the Mediterranean sea, and anyhow ‘all our products come from Italy, including pasta, either De Cecco or Barilla, you know…’: oops, a quick glance to Man, and De Cecco and Barilla all in one breath has yet again dampened his spirit.

Just at the right time, canapes arrive, in the form of a marinara (anchovies, capers, oregano, tomato but no cheese) and margherita pizza slices and some nice fat olives.

The pizza base was slightly soggy, but the whole was tasty, and worked out nice while waiting for our starters.

First comes the bread:

Herb focaccia and ‘Ferrarese’ like bread, that is with a white, compact yet fluffy crumb, good.

And then our starters. We finally had settled for:

- Marinated swordfish and tuna with olive oil and thyme (£8)

- Black ink risotto with grilled cuttlefish (£11)

Well, very generous portions here, which will prove a leitmotif of the evening. The fish carpaccio was really very good: the swordfish, and above all the tuna, were a concentrate of hints from the sea in the guise of the lightest of slices, and the dressing of fine olive oil, capers, thyme and pepper was very well judged, complementing rather than smothering the two main protagonists. Honestly, this delight of a dish wins hands down with the timid tuna carpaccio at the far more revered 1 Lombard street! And it looked good, too: and so Man is beginning to look happy again…

And the risotto was also very good: perfectly cooked, nicely al dente and at the same time rightly creamy, flavoursome, topped by a very fresh cuttlefish which had been grilled to perfect consistency: quite a joy to eat, Man looking all smiles now, so much so that Woman can slip in ‘and there are tablecloths here’, at which Man points out to a tear in the tablecloth, so Woman quickly changes topic…

Yet we are both in an expectant mood for our mains. We resist the temptation of the Pan fried calf liver with onions (£13.50) and Lobster and prawns guazzetto (the most expensive item on the menu at £16), and instead opt for:

- Grilled baby squids with fresh chilli peppers (£11)

- Ossobuco alla Milanese (£14.50)

The squids: a very generous portion (must have been nine of them) of flawlessly grilled squids, with the fresh chili peppers providing a nice hit while still playing second fiddle, enhancing the fragrant squids. Man, now almost ecstatic (Man: naah), is reminiscing of Da Barbara. Good olive oil as before, only far too much of it, creating a veritable pool in which the rocket had all the room to splash around, oh this is not classy… But then again this is witness to the generosity of the kitchen (good oil is expensive).

This theme continues in the ossobuco dish: we were surprised by the amount of tomato (here is the way WE make it...), but it did work fine in the end on the nice, tasty, tender piece of veal sitting on a large cushion of properly cooked saffron risotto, with loads of saffron stems, also intensely pleasing on the palate. One slip here, too, excess of fats in the condiment, but after all this is a rather rustic dish.

The fight over the marrow in the ‘buco’ over, of course we still have enough room left for desserts, which we are assured are all home made (actually, this is what we expected, but we told you already our sweet waiter appears still a bit naïve). These go from the £4 of the ‘affogato al caffe’ (i.e. vanilla ice cream doused in coffee) to the £12 of the sweet selection – and the coffee with petit fours is a very reasonable £2.75.

Our choice:

- Dolce all’amaretto (£5.5)

- Delizia al cioccolato (£5.5)

The amaretto dessert was made up of an amaretto pannacotta and an amaretto parfait. Two problems here: true, ‘amaro’ means bitter in Italian, and amaretti biscuits are prepared with some bitter almonds, to give them their interesting tang. But here the bitter note is truly overpowering, the bitter aftertaste definitely too much. And, the pannacotta suffers from that too common ailment, the excess of thickening, which drops to the bottom and leaves the ‘fluffy’ bits on top (before it is unmoulded, that is), as you can see from the picture (remember the pannacotta here?). Pity.

Quite a different story with the chocolate cake. Described as a combination of chocolate ice cream, chocolate pannacotta and chocolate soufflé; the latter item turns out instead to be a chocolate flan, and a very good one too, intensely chocolaty, with an interesting texture given by what must have been biscuits or similar crumbled into the chocolate mixture before cooking (a bit reminiscent of 'bunet', see for example the one here). Definitely the best item of the trio. Having said that, the chocolate icecream, resting on a (very bitter!) amaretto biscuit, was also adequately assertive in flavour, as was the pannacotta, verging on the ‘too solid’ like the amaretto one, but this time safely on the ‘good side’ of firmness. A very good assortment, with balanced and deep aromas.

With the half litre bottle of water acceptably priced at £2, and a bottle of easy drinking Aglianico at £23, our total bill including 12.5% service charge came to £90.56, which excludes a complimentary glass of Limoncello obtaining by charming the charming waiters. Not super cheap, but balance this with super generous portions, excellent ingredients, well appointed interiors (and yes, tablecloths!), presumably high rent in Chelsea, and it starts looking very reasonable. (In the end, a couple more tables trickled in, and we truly hope they managed to more than cover their costs on the night.)

The odd swearword exchanged between the waiter and the maitre d' or the shout to the chef Marco Solaro down (or up?) in the kitchen aside, service was charming and warm, from both the waiter and the attentive Maitre d'. You won’t find here the impeccable service that blesses other places where you can eat for around £100 (but those rarities are champions in value for money which puts them off any scale).

So, once you concede that in London even trattorias have to be expensive, this is definitely one new place to recommend, where a competent chef stays well within his comfort zone and prepares, simply and properly, ingredients of high quality. This IS good Italian cuisine (of the trattoria style). Sure, you will not find here the long and varied menu, nor maybe the study of details that Bocca di Lupo has on offer, but the style and quality (and quantity) that you find here surpasses easily that of the celebrated and more expensive Osteria dell’Arancio down the road, not to mention some award-winning celebrities who offer not much more than this at twice the price. And in Summer the outside garden must be truly inviting. In short, it is a bit too inconvenient for us Eastenders, but if you tread these grounds, make time for a visit.