People always assume that restaurants are ‘about’ the food. Business rendezvous are in fact rarely about the food, but, for obvious reasons, restaurateurs prefer to ‘play the game’, and pretend they are. One of the main ways restaurateurs hint that restaurants are ‘about’ the food is by making the menu prices reflect the cost of the items consumed. A ‘cheap’ dish, like soup, will generally cost quite a lot less than an ‘expensive’ one, like smoked salmon.
Perhaps some sort of special award for honesty should therefore go to this rather old-fashioned Italian in the bowels of Leadenhall Market, which has recognised that – in the heart of the City – the specifics of the food are beside the point. It hasn’t quite gone the whole hog and said ‘Starters Ten Pounds, Main Courses Twenty’ but it might as well have done. Although the dishes give the impression of being individually priced, the prices barely differ from one dish to another. The premium for choosing tuna for your main course over potato gnocchi, for example, is just £2. So if you go here, don’t stint on the protein.
If you were actually interested in what you were eating, you would surely go elsewhere. Even in the heart of the City there are better options. There are also places which are buzzier and more stylish. But this place knows its market, and is quite honest about it. Its website notes that it attracts ‘business executives drawn from local banks, insurance and law firms’. ‘Local’ must surely be the word. This is a restaurant which simply could not survive if it were not the three famous touchstones of the estate agent’s world: location, location and location.
