Worth staying home for

The first impression of this restaurant above the East Dulwich Tavern is of a wonderfully large, airy space made rather drab with grey/green walls and slate grey curtains. Then there is the aural assault: perfectly amiable funky R'n'B is transformed, by virtue of its decibel level, into an aggressive intruder; Sunday lunch was never meant to be so darn loud.

The menu is a fairly safe mixture of pizza, pasta and salads - with a couple of dishes from the Spanish/Turkish Moro cookbook sitting a little incongruously alongside. A plate of antipasti was a disappointment: one slice of salami, a tiny piece of prosciutto and half an artichoke heart (from a jar?) with a few olives, onions and sun-dried tomatoes for £6.95. Rigatoni with chorizo, however, was appropriately robust, with real depth to the sausageladen tomato sauce.

A happily proffered child's portion of cappelletti with Parma ham, butter and sage, looked very pretty and was scoffed quickly by its four-year-old recipient. But the spinach and feta salad was an unwieldy pile of under-dressed leaves and huge lumps of cheese that quickly bored the palate. A smashed raspberry pavlova was tasty, an enormous dish of decent ice cream vanished in seconds, though a lemon tart suffered from a soft, dense pastry crust.

With a bottle of Rioja (from a surprisingly short wine list), garlic bread and coffee, the bill reached a steep £68 before service; a bit pricey for food you could put together at home.

Upstairs At The EDT
1 Lordship Lane, East Dulwich, SE22 8EW