Two decades on, Locanda Locatelli's star still shines for elegant simplicity, regional cuisine

There are just three Italian restaurants in London blessed with Michelin stars. Though each is distinctive from the other, all three present a view of the world's most popular cuisine that's far removed from the pizza and pasta joints most people associate with the word Italian. Closest to my heart has always been Locanda Locatelli, which celebrates its 20th year with a star in 2023.

It was the first place I'd ever been that elevated Italian food to fine dining. Many of the dishes were
familiar ... the major cultural influence of my childhood was Italian-American ... and I cooked some of them regularly, but chef Giorgio Locatelli worked a magic that took flavours to a different level. Yet he did it while retaining the simplicity, and the celebration of key ingredients, that's so essential to Italian food. He also maintained a rare authenticity to regional recipes. Downmarket Italian Anglicises everything, upmarket tends to bring in a lot of French influence, or goes off piste with crazy experimentation. Giorgio's kitchen serves up dishes that might come straight from a nonna in Palermo or Piedmont, just refined to their finest essence.

It's been 11 years since my last visit, and I'm delighted to say that absolutely nothing has changed. So you could just read my last review. But to give two decades of quality its due, I'll write on.

It was a special occasion, as any visit to the Michelin stratosphere and its related prices should be. An adopted nephew provided the excuse: a young foodie whose tastes in both food and wine are already quite sophisticated, we'd offered a Michelin-starred meal if he made his expected A-level grades. His success meant we got to accompany him on a culinary journey while his parents get to fund King‘s College London. A clear win for team Bencard.

We decided to go for the full four-course Italian extravaganza: antipasto, pasta, main and pudding. Clearly, I didn't read my own review before we sat down or I would have remembered "you could do the traditional four ... but the portions here are large enough to make that rather excessive." Hey ho. We were in excess territory. The menu was so tempting it would have been hard to decide what to forgo, with the antipaste looking particularly tempting. I actually thought of having two or three of those instead of the traditional courses.

Our young scholar started with scallops, the husband opted for pigeon legs accompanied by pigeon-liver pate on crostini and I went for burrata with grilled fennel and grapefruit. The last was a riposte to all of the times I've been positive I don't like grapefruit in savoury salads. It's clearly all about the balance, which Locatelli's somehow manages to get right. The scallops were a revelation for our lad, who'd never had them cooked with their corals still attached and was pleasantly surprised. My husband's delighte with the pigeon was sharpened by an exquisite bottle of schioppettino that he proclaimed a perfect match. (This little known variety from Friuli is one of my favourites and something I'll order whenever I see it on a menu. The sommelier's unfeigned joy when I chose it was one of the best parts of the meal.) Meanwhile, the lad and I had tucked into a carricante (white) from the slopes of Mt. Etna.

Thankfully, Mr. B had moved to pumpkin tortellini for the next course so switched wine colours, or we would have needed another bottle of the red. Our scholar and I both opted for the lobster with spaghetti, which was good but lacked the sweet acidity this dish has at its best, with ripe, fresh summer tomatoes. I should have gone with my other choice, gnocchi with a wild venison ragu. Not only would it have been more seasonal, but I've never really managed to make good gnocchi at home, so it's always informative to sample a professional offering.

Our guest clearly won the contest of the main courses with slices of char-grilled ribeye on cavolo nero, its simple perfection a textbook definition of great Italian food. I chose roast rabbit leg wrapped in parma ham, again defaulting to something I love but always have trouble cooking. (The difference between raw and overcooked rabbit is minuscule.) Mr. B left the rest of the schioppettino to us, moving on to a truffle-crusted fillet of brill and the rest of the bottle of carricante. Even though I loved my dish, I was looking with envy at the others. Everything managed the trick of being delicious comfort food while at the same time elegant and sophisticated.

Only a broken oven saved me from the sad inevitability of powering through a dessert when I was already stuffed. But I would have happily continued on through a pistachio shuffle and chocolate chip ice cream,  combining some of my favourite flavours in the world. Fortunately they did have some pistachio ice cream, so we could end with a bit of sweetness without approaching a Mr. Creosote moment. Locatelli's only uses the pistachios from the Sicilian village of Bronte, famed as the most flavourful in the world. One small quenelle of the ice cream here has more flavour than a gallon of the green stuff in your typical gelateria. With flavours this intense, less really is more. 

I have been to many Michelin-starred establishments since my first visit to the then newly-celebrated Locanda Locatelli. In many ways, this place is an aberration. While the food is beautifully plated, it's closer to what you could attempt at home than the gels, towers, cubes and swooshes that so often turn a dinner plate into modern art. There's no tasting menu. Nothing is re-invented or de-constructed. The front of house staff is resolutely Italian, in a city where almost every top restaurant features a United Nations of talented youth ambitious to get ahead in this high-end industry. It feels like a warm, welcoming family restaurant, not a palace of cutting edge gastronomy. Forget all the extra pomp and circumstance, Locanda Locatelli's star is for what's going on in your mouth. After 20 years, I'm happy to say they still deserve it.

Angela Hartnett's Murano and the legendary River Cafe hold London's other two Italian stars. I adore Murano and it was the other option for this lunch the moment our scholar chose Italian. Giorgio got my vote simply because we hadn't been there in so long. Angela's is more formal, more likely to infuse the core Italian cuisine with innovation, and will offer you a chef's tasting menu. It's a very different approach, but equally delicious and I'd happily contribute my discretionary income to either place. My River Cafe experience, so long ago that it pre-dates this blog, didn't encourage me to try again. Though their team deserves credit for being the first to bring high-end Italian to London, I just didn't think the food was that exceptional for what it was (I was spending a lot of time in Italy at the time so comparing accordingly). For me, the restaurant also suffered badly from its tough-to-get-to Hammersmith location and its industrial warehouse vibe, not an atmosphere I enjoy in restaurants. That's not to take away from the River Cafe's accomplishments: this is Ground Zero for Italian fine dining in London, their cookbooks have been hugely influential and the list of chefs who trained here (Jamie Oliver, Theo Randall) is extraordinary.