Via Condotti

Via Condotti is to be found amongst the fashionistas of the West End - or the other way round if you prefer. If at first you don't succeed . . . . . just ask!

It may be a close connection between Rome's version of Oxford Street, and the confines of Conduit Street, bur few things could be closer than the cuisine practised in Rome and mirrored here. A joint venture between renowned restaurateur Claudio Pulze, General Manager Richard Martinez and Chef Patron Pasquale Amico, Via Condotti is named after Rome's most famous shopping street. Pasquale has produced a menu that takes many of those Roman classics out of the cupboard, gives them a shake and re-presents them in Via Condotti.

"What you see on the menu is what you get on the plate," he says, "I wanted to produce a selection of dishes that best represent the Italian classics, that are cooked in a timeless fashion and are excellent in their simplicity".

Italian cuisine demands that we spend more time on titillating the tastebuds than in most others. Culinary foreplay is important. Take canola filled with ricotta cheese, candied fruit and chocolate, or baby whitebait cake with salad of celery, fennel and radish, grass pea soup with potato gnocchi, or candela pasta with baby octopus and you will discover that you have come by easy stages to a point where you are able to fully appreciate the main events.

This could be chargrilled new season rack of lamb with cipollotti onion, fillet of red gurnard cooked with cherry tomato, white wine and parsley, or even the humble rabbit, roasted and served with a cacciatore sauce.

Prices are set at rates which frankly mark this excellent eatery as one of the neighbourhood variety, yet the quality is that of a top flight restaurant, probably a good thing since there is little evidence of a neighbourhood in restaurant terms.

Writing in The Independent in August 2006, John Walsh said, "Chef and co-owner Pasquale Amico .... brings a modern sensibility to old Italian favourites."