Flavours of Sardinia

Mirto opened just before Christmas 2003. It's a small, light, friendly restaurant with a Sardinian heart but Metropolitan manners. The menu isn't aggressively regional, but the food is fresh and good, and they do serve Ichnusa, the Sardinian beer with four Moors on the label. This is the sort of restaurant that seems quite at home on a stretch of the Fulham Road awash with 'neighbourhood' eating places.

The menu is broken down in classical Italian style - antipasti, pasta, mains. The antipasti ranges from pan-fried pecorino cheese with baked cherry tomatoes to an octopus salad with cardoons and celery in lemon dressing, or sautéed calamari with aubergine, fregola and mint - a good dish, the squid well cooked, and not too chewy, a good foil for the richness of the aubergine and the minted fregola (which is a kind of pasta, each piece about the same shape and size as a single kernel of sweetcorn).

Antipasto Sardo brings a plate of cured meats - decent ham, a couple of salamis, some tapenade and a couple of kinds of cheese all on top of plenty of pan casarau (flat slivers of the extra-thin, extra-crisp Sardinian bread that's like a poppadom with attitude).

Onwards to half a dozen pasta options - linguine with velvet crab and tomato sauce, or spaghetti with bottarga (the intensely flavoured dried tuna row) or a really good risotto made with arborio rice and plenty of razor clams. Main courses are strong on fish, such as marinated sardines with bay leaf and pine nuts, la griglata mista di pesce - langoustines, king prawns, squid and swordfish - or baked sea bream with a sauce made from Vernaccia wine and green olives and accompanied by green beans - the fish served off the bone and accurately cooked. For dedicated carnivores there is a rack of lamb with roast endive, or a grilled rib-eye steak.

The wine list has plenty of Sardinian bottles that are worth exploring - look out for the ruby-red Cannonau. The dessert menu is vaguely perplexing. There are sebadas - a Sardinian speciality which are fried, cheese-filled, sweet pastries rather like crunchy nonconformist ravioli. There are biscotti, served with a Sardinian pudding wine called Anghelo Ruju to dip them in. There's a cheeseboard and there is a pistachio, hazelnut and chocolate tiramisu. The jury is still out on whether the addition of a bushel of nuts contributes anything extra, as the standard tiramisu works well on its own.

Beware the Mirto - the liqueur after which the place is named - and double beware the Filuferru - a grappa named, according to Sardinian legend, after the lead wire used by farmers to mark hidden trap doors over illicit, underground stills.

Service is friendly and the food is honest, which makes Mirto a welcome addition to the scores of eateries on this stretch of restaurant gulch.