There are good reasons why I’d never gone to Polpetto. For one, I never want to eat dinner flat on 6pm. For another, they don’t take reservations for 7pm which, for the record, is my ideal time for dining out because you get there, get settled, browse the menu, order and bam! Dinner is served at 7.30pm. Yeah, control freak much?
Anyway, that’s why I hadn’t ever gone to Russell Norman’s much talked about Polpetto because the one time I did want to eat before 6pm? I went to Spuntino because Peanut Butter And Jelly Ice Cream Sandwich. That is all.
But! Saturday was totally whack because I’d woken up early and Panu woke up late (big Friday night), I’d eaten breakfast (left over fried rice YUM) at about 11am and so when he was ready for lunch circa 2pm, I wasn’t all that hungry and nor was he for very different reasons. We snacked at Flat Planet and so by 5pm, we were starving.
Where else to go when one’s ready for dinner pre-6pm? Pol-effing-petto.
I’m not even going to go into how Polpetto opened off the back of Polpo and how it landed on the radar of the food blogging community and how a shit-tonne of blog posts were spawned from this. Oh. As it transpires, I just have and this is just another post and yes, I love Polpetto just as much. Fricking yawn.
But for the record, I didn’t love it all. I didn’t love the beetroot & goat curd pizzetta at all. It pretty much tasted like nothing, except for when you got a mouthful of goat curd, and then it tasted like goat curd. Not sure what went wrong – the pizzetta is the darn prettiest thing I’ve seen in a while but there was just no personality. I guess that happens to the prettiest of ’em.
beetroot & goat curd pizzetta
But everything else I loved. From the Devon crab pasta dish drowned in butter to the zucchini fries, strung so thinly like its shoestring cousin, except zucchini! And the rabbit. You don’t know tender until it smacks you square in the face, rabbit & pancetta style. Soft, sweet, savoury, heavenly, melt in your mouth sinful.
Devon crab, sea purslane & trofie
zucchini fries
braised rabbit & pancetta
tiramisu pot
And then there’s the itty bitty too-tiny tiramisu pot. Not the best tiramisu I’ve had (the best is at Jak’s Cafe hands down and then there’s the one my friend Isabella made, but y’all can’t get hold of that one) but pretty damn good and tiny enough to warrant a second dessert straight afterwards. I love that.
So that’s me, that’s my two cents worth about something you’ve probably read about to death. It’s done, I’ve ticked the box and now I can fall back into line with the rest of humanity again.
Polpetto
Upstairs at The French House
49 Dean St
Soho, W1D 5BG
0207 734 1969 (bookings for lunch only)
website
