Spagnoletti
Spagnoletti is an Italian style restaurant operating with a sharing dishes concept. We visited this in the middle of October, when it was reasonably busy.
Just like other sharing dishes places, they recommend a certain number of plates per person. In Spagnoletti's case, three to four. As part of this concept, most of the dishes also come at random moments.
We weren't especially hungry, and the waiter was surprised that we did not order the recommended amount of plates. However, for our starters we ordered the wild mushrooms and truffle arancini, with a whipped goat's cheese, and the suckling pig and black pudding croquettes. The arancini stood out. They had a perfectly crisp and seasoned coating and a smooth mushroom filling, and the whipped goats cheese was both delicious alone and as an accompaniment to the arancini. The croquettes sadly were a little underwhelming, both in terms of flavour and the amount of filling.
For her main course, my wife picked the burrata, which was served with butternut squash and chicory leaves. I chose the risotto with a pulled shin of beef and bone marrow. The burrata showed up first, and we soon realised that the warm risotto wasn't coming until the cold burrata had been eaten. The burrata with butternut squash, with a few bits of mandarin was a good combination, with the slightly bitter chicory rounding it off. The risotto, once it arrived half an hour later, was quite wet, with the rice on top of the pulled beef and bone marrow, and had an odd “gravy” sitting with the meat. It had depth, but it was a little strange to eat… and overall far too wet
Because the burrata came before the risotto, we didn't really get to eat at the same time, even though we had mentioned that these would be our main dishes. Awkward. Luckily, they did have a couple of interesting beers from the Portobello microbrewery that we enjoyed during the waiting time.
Sometimes, a place that does "sharing dishes" works fine, but in this case, it fell a little flat on its face.
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