Madonna's fine local Italian

This review was published in March 2002

One New Year's Eve, reclusive multi-millionaire and womaniser Howard Hughes decided to have dinner with three of his lovers in different parts of the same hotel. I could not help thinking of this dilemma when I found my way into Locanda Locatelli.

The place had opened a couple of days earlier and was crawling with restaurant critics. Poor old Mr and Mrs Ritchie, who just happened to be on the next table, must have felt quite left out. Apart from the rather sad fact that all of us had nothing better to do on a Saturday night than be out testing a new Italian restaurant, it does demonstrate the excitement generated by Giorgio Locatelli.

Like Gordon Ramsay, Giorgio came to prominence while working for A-Z Restaurants, when he cooked at Zafferano . After that he worked for Hani Farsi at Cecconi's , and now he has his own name above the door, in a restaurant attached to the Churchill Inter-Continental.

Locanda Locatelli is not dissimilar in style to Cecconi's. There is a familiarity about the graphics and a David Collins interior - one of the nicest he has done for a while. The look is cool and elegant: etched glass, huge backlit convex mirrors, strikingly grained woods, fashionably textured banquettes and rather clever swivel chairs.

Wrenching my eyes from this visual banquet to gaze at the menu, I found a list of uncompromising starters: mackerel fillet wrapped in pork belly with saffron; Savoy cabbage stuffed with pork sausages and saffron risotto; cured pork loin and boar ham; ox tongue and green sauce.

I take it that this is all window-dressing swagger aimed at gastrobores. The sort of haute bourgeoisie who will end up patronising a place like this are hardly going to dress up in their Dolce & Gabbana to tuck into anything as visceral-sounding as pork belly or ox tongue. Instead, I imagine that the sort of things that will sell are the chargrilled fresh tuna with wild rocket and cherry tomatoes, quail risotto, duck breast, linguine alle vongole and artichoke salad with parmesan.

Indeed, among the starters that eventually arrived at our table was an artichoke salad with parmesan. It looked every inch as it should, a real lady-who-may-go-out-to-eat-but-wants-to-stay-a-size-eight sort of dish. The only slight cavil was that we did not order it. So while I munched my way through a salad of pan-fried cheese, my wife waited for delivery of her pasta.

The pasta dishes strike me as the most interesting part of the menu: spaghetti with tuna 'meatballs'; red onion tordelli in Chianti sauce; tagliatelle in saor; and tortellini di bottarga. The dish that arrived in the end - clams and linguine - was fine.

I thought the sea bream with fennel and bagna cauda was excellent; the anchovy sauce bringing a salty piquancy to the dish. But if anything the beef (also accompanied by fennel) ordered by my wife (and I noted by Mr Ritchie) was a little too heavily salted.

Puddings are more mannered and decorated than mains, accessorised with little sails, cages and other examples of the patissier's art. The chocolate and hazelnut cake with caramel mascarpone lends itself well to this genteel presentation - sweet and satisfying yet appearing in such carefully judged portions as to be nearly as guilt-free as a proper pudding can be.

I think Locanda Locatelli will make its eponymous proprietor into a star. Not necessarily because it is a marvellous restaurant - although when the inconsistencies I experienced are ironed out I am sure it will be a very worthy addition to London's excellent array of top-flight Italians - but because it will serve the same purpose as a flagship store on Bond Street.