Restaurant: Polpetto, London W1

Small plates are trendy, but are they any good? Our critic finds out at one of Soho's newest Italians
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Polpetto, London W1
Polpetto, London W1: Small, but is it perfectly formed?

Right now in the restaurant business, small is huge. It's massive, is small. Small? Humongous. No, not the prices – don't be thick. The portions. Menus tend to call them "small plates", because calling them "small portions" might make the underlying economic thinking a little too clear.

  1. Polpetto
  2. 49 Dean Street,
  3. London
  4. W1D 5BG
  5. 020-7734 1969
  1. Open Mon-Sat, lunch noon-3pm, ­dinner 5.30-11pm (no reservations in the evening). Meal for two with drinks and service, about £50.

Of the varying types of small plates, Italian are currently biggest. This week's restaurant, Polpetto, is the third newly-launched trendy London small-plate Italian I've written about in three months. Before those were another two, both in Soho, Bocca di Lupo and Polpo (the chef of the latter, now also head chef at Polpetto, was headhunted from the former). In the old days of Fleet Street, they used to have a saying: "Two's a trend, three's a feature." By the time you get to five, the shock of the new is starting to wear off.

This is not to diss Polpetto. It's very professional. The venue is the upstairs room at the French House, a historically important pub, once HQ of the Free French in London and subsequently a boho hang-out of a, to be honest, slightly plonkerish and self-conscious type. (I once told my first boss, Karl Miller, that I was meeting someone there. "Ah, yes," he said, "the French House. Full of interesting-slash-uninteresting people." That about summed it up.)

The restaurant upstairs, for years a bit of a dive, became important, too, as the place where Fergus Henderson first brought his cooking to the attention of the world. His wife Margot subsequently cooked there, also to great effect. The cooking was very serious while pretending not to be, but the room was a bit cramped and rough at the edges. When he opened St John, it felt as if his food for the first time had the venue it deserved.

Under the new regime, as Polpetto, the room works better. The idea is to copy the small bar/restaurants of Venice, which specialise in good and unpretentious food accompanied by good and unpretentious drinks. The signifiers are those of casual dining: the paper tablecloth is also the menu, and there are funkily tiny wineglasses already set up. It's a good fit with the small room and the noisy pub below, and the twisty staircase populated by Soho wallies on their way to the loo and/or making mobile phone calls.

The fact that it's a good fit is not an accident. The concept behind Polpetto might seem the work of some soulful Italian possessed by an exile's nostalgia for his beloved Veneto, but in fact it's the work of a hard-headed restaurant pro, Russell Norman. He used to be head of operations for Caprice Holdings, and the fact that this is a well-run, bang-on-trend restaurant is what you'd expect; the slight scruffiness is as carefully judged as designer stubble.

I liked the food. It doesn't try to be dazzling, but nor is it These You Have Loved. Duck and porcini meatballs, for instance, are listed under cicheti (Italian for, "You think those other buggers are small plates? You'll need to get your reading glasses out to find this lot"). A hearty, meaty dish at an unusual price for central London: £1.50. That's per meatball, but still. Anchovy and chickpea crostino? £1. Melanzane parmigiana? £2. A small plate of swordfish, lemon and dill ricotta was soothing and refreshing, and cost £2.50.

It's not the subtlest or most delicate cooking in the world. Chilli and garlic prawns were too gloopy for me, and pigeon saltimbocca a bit rough. But at £7 for each dish, the value is so good, you don't mind. I also liked the feeling that the fresh, unpretending food was coming straight out of the kitchen and on to the table.

One of the admirable things about Polpetto is that it doesn't do what small-plate restaurants often do, and sneakily mount up the cost. (I think that's one of the reasons the trade currently loves this type of restaurant: they look cheaper than they turn out to be.) The wine list keeps it simple and good value, too. If I had a friend with a consuming interest in Italian food, I wouldn't necessarily take her to Polpetto; but if she were about to go into the restaurant business and wanted to see how to catch a trend and do it just right, it would be top of my list.

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