Going Loco in SW6

Munster Road is the artery that provides the oxygen for street after street of smart Fulham houses. You'll find a shirt service, a decent deli, interior design shops and a number of restaurants, including Loco Locale.

Fulham's football team may now be a poor relation to neighbouring Chelsea, but as a desirable place to live, "just off the Fulham Palace Road" still has real cachet.

What's more, this is an area where the accommodation offers something for every life stage: you can start in a flat, trade up to one of the area's small houses and then move again to the broader streets and one of the large and expensive houses with a garden. Fifteen years of property progression, and all in the same neighbourhood.

Loco Locale is a large sprawling site, dark inside and (weather permitting) a busy terrace outside. The decor is a bit gastropubby but the pace of the place is rather more frantic, and the pricing is restaurant level.

It is the brainchild of Tony Allan, whose CV includes stints heading a catering fishmonger and then a chain of fish restaurants called Fish!. Allen then went on to do a television series with Giorgio Locatelli, so it's no surprise that his choice of cuisine for a local restaurant is Italian.

At Loco Locale you get accessible Italian food - it's a step up from old-time "redsaucespag-bol" Italian restos but there's nothing too complex or obscurely regional to mystify the punters.

We are in Fulham, so the prices look to be on the high side of reasonable, and Loco does commit one of the more grasping of restaurant sins by making a separate charge for bread. Doubtless they would defend themselves by pointing out that it is very good, freshly baked bread, but still...

Starters range from a Tuscan salad with rocket, spelt, broad beans, cherry tomatoes and Pecorino, to a roast goat's cheese with walnuts on baby spinach, or buffalo mozzarella with tomato and basil pesto. Bresaola comes with rocket, lemon and Parmesan and is cut admirably thin - it just needs a little bread on the side.

A couple of the pasta dishes, plus the prawn and courgette risotto, are available as starter or main, and the strozzapretti with wild boar ragu is wholly successful - a rich, soft ragu with the flavours well balanced and that vaguely musty hint of gaminess from the wild pig.

For main course the specials board lists a couple of extra choices: roast duck breast and a dish of pasta with clams. There are also some serious pasta choices, such as spinach and ricotta cannelloni and black tagliolini with crab, garlic, chilli and tomatoes.