Italian marketing job falls short

This review was published in April 2002

Like it or not, we live in an age where marketing is king. Any new restaurant that opens today, unless it be the kind of passionate mom'n'pop operation where somebody somewhere has had a dream, tends to be driven by market forces rather than the genuine desire to feed people and the satisfaction that gives.

That's why we have the chains of this world, and their close relation, the 'groups'; each is an evolution of a winning formula, designed as crowdpleasers, created to milk potentially lucrative target audiences.

Yeah, yeah, you might think. We know all this. So why am I reiterating it? Simply because the newly opened Italian restaurant Timo - part of the A-Z Group which already runs the Rosmarino in St John's Wood, the wildly popular Spighetta brand, and Belgravian super-Italian Zafferano , where Giorgio Locatelli first came to prominence - has completely bamboozled me.

I can't for the life of me figure out what kind of a creative conceptual brainstorm had this anodyne, if very reasonably priced, little modern Italian restaurant as its result.

It's in a little parade of shops, where the spirit of Michael Winner lurks (the gorgeous, exotic, caviar-selling Lebanese shops, The Belvedere and Memories Of China are his locals, God help 'em); surrounding houses reek of money; Holland Park is across the road. Yet it's not an area overburdened with top-flight restaurants. And I doubt Timo will become one. It's a pleasant, small, beige spot, populated by thirty and fortysomethings (many, impressively, Italian); but there's no ball-tingling factor, nothing to indicate its raison d'etre.

Prices are set, with no supplements - you can have a lavish four courses for a mere £23. Metaphorically, the menu is as beige as the surroundings: little innovation and certainly no pyrotechnics. Quality's good, though. Bread is fresh, buffalo mozzarella milkily tender, goat's cheese tangy and mild - no complaints there.

Starters are assemblies: the mozzarella on top of meaty aubergine; the goat's cheese with chargrilled vegetables. Pasta dishes are the best courses by far: oxtail ravioli with thyme and carrot sauce was excellent, pungently sauced and silkily stuffed with dense, meaty filling; but the classic linguine with clams was thick with almost too-fruity olive oil, oversalted and lacked its promised chilli punch.

Main courses in the most forward-thinking Italian restaurants can often disappoint; recently reinvented by creative chefs, they've taken on a new lease of life. Timo's versions, however, tended towards the old school. A serviceable slab of seabream languished on top of a pile of new potatoes and olives; this was simply dull.

A chicken breast bludgeoned into an unnaturally large surface area and chargrilled resembled, in its size and sponginess, an albino loofah; diced roast potatoes and spinach did little to alleviate the effect. Both dishes were overwhelmed by more overpowering olive oil. By far the nicest thing we had all evening was a complimentary appetiser of what appeared to be tagliatelle fried into toothsome puffiness and dipped into a home-made tomato sauce - a bijou version of the Ligurian fried-dough sgabei.

Our bill for three courses each, with a glass of champagne, Punt e Mes (extra points for stocking this hard-to-find aperitivo) and an excellent bottle of Verdicchio, weighed in at a wallet-friendly £66 for two. On reflection, maybe the marketing bods at A-Z are being laterally creative. OK, so it doesn't feel to me like a destination restaurant, but it's - relatively - cheap, informal and satisfactory.

Just the place for the inhabitants of the million-pound-plus gaffs nearby to head for when it's the staff's night off. For these wealthy locals, Timo could perform the function of local caff.