Latium

I had a good birthday. The Pretty Lady, Yogababe and I started out at Albannach for cocktails (for them) and drams (for me). We then moved on to Latium (adjacent image from restaurantguides.co.uk) where I'd invited some friends for dinner.

I'd been there before with the Pretty Lady, for their Valentine's Day lunch, but wasn't planning to come back here so soon. However, they had a chef's table - which turned out to be too small for my party. However, the staff were extremely kind and were willing to take a large booking, something that many otherwise good restaurants aren't. Bonus points for that.

Latium
21 Berners Street
London W1T 3LP
020 7323 9123

I let Yogababe choose the wine, as I'd come a cropper here the last time I tried. She chose well, better than I did, a white that was fairly neutral food wise and seemed to go with most of my meal (as well as the bits I cadged off others too). As usual, I'll blog about that separately. Latium has a very good selection though, and I reckon it would be possible to drink my way through a selection of Italy's fine and decent wines should I visit often enough. The wine list focuses on Italian grape varieties, although the ubiquitous Pinots, Sauvignon Blancs and Chardonnays make their own appearance.

At Latium, you can choose a starter and / or a pasta, a main course, and a dessert. On both visits I eschewed the four course option, preferring instead to enjoy a dessert and a digestif (there are several ports and dessert wines on the menu). I think it's been the right decision both times.

This time, I had a tagliolini with crab meat and sauteed shredded aubergine to kick off. It was great. Sweet shredded crab meat in cream sauce, tender tagliolini, and the little strands of smoky, sweet aubergine to impart little bursts of flavour here and there. Little sprinkles of chilli and parsley gave it a kick. The Pretty Lady had pappardelle in a wild boar ragu, the twist being that there was no tomato in it - just sage, butter and broth. I found it gamey, almost wild in taste, and while I prefer the sweet tomato paste to offset the game, it was pretty tasty.

The most popular starter round the table seemed to be the fish ravioli. Latium makes ravioli something of a specialty - I had the oyster ravioli the last time, each piece of pasta enclosing a whole oyster, gently poached in fish broth. It wasn't in evidence on this visit, but there were 4 types of fish ravioli, each in a differently flavoured pasta parcel. I particularly recall the spinach ravioli, with firm white fish inside, paired with mild ricotta.

For the main course, I had seared fillet of beef with mashed potato and bok choy in barolo jus. Simple dish - I enjoyed the beef and the potato (which tasted like it had gruyere in it; just a guess, maybe it was a lot of butter and salt), but I felt that the bok choy was a little bitter, with a sour aftertaste that didn't suit the wine-flavoured sauce. The Pretty Lady had the seabass I think, but memory fails me (it would have been rude for me to have whipped out my Blackberry and started taking food notes in detail).

Dessert was a revelation! There were three types of sweet ravioli on the menu. I had the apple and raisin ravioli which came in a cream sauce flavoured with vanilla and sea salt, and sprinkled with cinnamon. It was delicious, the flavours offsetting each other nicely. Think apple pie in a salty crust. Although the chef had dropped a large grain of salt on the edge of the plate, which gave me a surprise with my large spoonful. But never mind.

Latium has great petit fours - biscotti, hazelnut cookies, cinnamon chocolate truffles, all served with very good coffee. It's a great end to the meal, a chance to catch up and chat. And that's exactly what we did. I also had my digestif of course (the Vin Santo), but we had so much fun we moved on to the East Room courtesy of Yogababe.

I'm definitely going back to Latium. Their ravioli selection changes very often, and the chef is a past master. With such variety on the menu, it's a rewarding place to visit - several times over.

Scores:

24 April 2008: TFQ = 27, CS = 26, S = 16, AD = 7, VfM = 7. Total = 83 points.

What does this mean?