L'Arte is a small café style place - with plain wooden tables and a tiled floor - that tries hard to make a virtue of its very unpretentiousness. It is busiest at lunchtime, and it can be taken a little by surprise in the evening if too many unscheduled diners all turn up at once. Such is the loyalty of some of its devoted customers, that they are sometimes pressed into service! And a jolly good job one of them made of it when we were there, I thought.
The menu is small, a virtue in my book, making use of seasonal ingredients, fresh produce and the chef-patron's enthusiasm for Italian country style cooking. Unfortunately the saltimbocca had been very popular at lunchtime so we were unable to try it. When the menu is short, 'no shows' do restrict one's choice rather severely.
A starter of stuffed courgette flowers fried in a light tempura (7.50) was nicely done as was a simple salad of fresh anchovies and sardines (6.00). The artichokes in my Insalata di Carciofini (6.50), were a little overpowered by the rocket and shaved parmesan and I lusted after my neighbour's rich looking mussel soup, which at 4.50 seemed more the sort of price one would expect to pay for a starter in such circumstances. Our deliberations over the menu were helped along by some very good olives and home made bread.
For our main courses, we had some chargrilled rabbit with puy lentils (10.50). The friend we brought with us had no trouble in negotiating an alternative accompaniment of sauted potatoes. I had a fairly ordinary piece of grilled, or possibly fried, chicken with some mashed pototoes and spinach. My next door neighbour was less fortunate, she was offered only the mashed potato with her chicken breast. Her friend had bass cooked and served in an envelope of aluminium foil, which she said was tasty (the bass, that is) - but it took just about as long to unwrap the parcel as it did to eat the fish.
There is a good range of rather delicious desserts all costing 4.00. You can have such delights as chilled zabaglione with vin santo, whipped cream and raspberies, or a concoction of peaches, marscapone and amaretto in a raspberry coulis. We had a very good selection of home made ices - the amaretto sorbet was particularly good. I liked the idea of Italian cheeses served with fresh slices of pear.
We had two bottles of wine, a good crisp Frascati, and a red Salentino to go with the rabbit and chicken. We shared a glass of vin santo with our desserts. The bill for the three of us, with three courses, the wines, two coffees and service came to 109 pounds.
L'Arte, 16 Cleveland Street, London W1P 5DN
Tel: 020 7813 1011 Open Moday to friday 12 noon to 11pm. Saturday
6-11pm, closed all day Sunday. L'Arte is 5 to 10 minutes walk
(depending on your fitness), from the British Museum, Madame
Tussauds, the Wallace Collection and Oxford Street.
If you have visited L'Arte please let us have your
comments:
dine@dine-online.co.uk
Dine Online Copyright Clifton Media Associates 1997, All rights reserved.