Il Baretto

Image above: IT Girl loving her meaty monkfish main course drenched in this incredible sauce. [Friday 11 February] | [View all photos]

Introducing IT Girl to See Yun and Wendy (finally!) we tried out a Italian restaurant recommendation courtesy of one of my friends and had a fabulous evening together. Especially IT Girl in getting the girls on side and basically teasing me all evening!

Entering on the ground floor and only seeing a small bar area with just a few tables I was wondering what kind of place that I had booked. But that soon turned to relief as we were directed to the expansive and classy dining area downstairs. I know that it shouldn’t matter but it was reassuring that all but one of the front of house team were Italian-born – it just added an air of authenticity to the whole eating experience especially when we asking about a specific dish and recommendations about what to choose.

As it turned out, we all ended up just choosing the seafood dishes for our meal. We started with wafer-thin sea bass carpaccio with a refreshingly light tangy dressing. Quite an uncommon dish to see on a menu and we were glad that we tried it out. Followed up by the classic deep-fried squid and courgettes which can run the risk of being quite ordinary but not here.

Our final starter was oven baked sea scallop done Venetian style. This had fragrant sage breadcrumbs covering the succulent scallop. My only complaint here is that although it was sizeable there was, alas, only one as I could’ve easily wolfed down a couple more!

Impressed by the starters – comparisons with Il Bordello were inevitable – we eagerly looked forward to the main dish. The highlight was IT Girl’s choice of monkfish which was meaty yet had this melt-in-the-mouth texture and the sauce it was drenched in was incredible. Reminded me of how good the sauce was Wright Brothers Soho’s fish stew.

Though equally, Wendy’s swordfish was a prime example of how good simply cooked seafood can be and See Yun’s black ink tagliolini with crab meat and courgette, recommended by the waitress, was equally delicious. And as for my dish of linguine with lobster, sweet chilli, garlic & white wine sauce – suffice it to say that I loved mopping up the leftover rich sauce with the bread.

Dinner wouldn’t be complete with dessert and the hot chocolate fondant with pistachio ice cream that I shared with IT Girl was good – though it would’ve been better if it had a lot more chocolate oozing out of it. But considering how the rest of the meal was it was a minor point on an otherwise excellent meal with smooth service throughout.

At the end, the bill came to around £50 per person so it’s not really the place for casual inexpensive dining but if you’re looking for something special or just to treat yourself, then do check this place out. We thought that it was worth it and for IT Girl, it’s one of her top three restaurants in London now. For somewhere a little less expensive but still good then do check out Il Bordello as well.