Telephone: 020-7637 0789
Address: 10 Wigmore Street, London W1
Rating: 16.5/20

There was something about the menu sent to me that suggested that Eddalino was worth a closer look. Ribollita con scampi might be a pretty suspect take on a Tuscan original, and I wasn't so certain about rombo al vino rosso in crosta di patate, because it sounded more like a dish you'd find in France than in Italy, particularly accompanied by macedonia di melanzane e cetriolo con lattuga appasita. But gnocchi alla papera, coniglio farcito, spezzatino do manzo con gnocchi di castagne and porchetta arrosto suggested the hand of a chef from the Marche, even if the porchetta was served with gatto di patate al rosmarino, which seemed to me to be a distinctly haute cuisine attachment - gatto = gateau - to a cucina casalinga (aka home cooking) body.

Italian chefs seem to find this country more encouraging to their creative impulses than back home. We are both more open-minded and more ignorant. Italians in Italy tend to be both wedded to the food of the town, city or area in which they grew up, and immensely conservative about the way it is prepared. I am not saying that there are no creative chefs in Italy. But there aren't many of them, not because Italian chefs are less creative than French or British ones, but because their customers don't want creativity. They want what their parents wanted, and their grandparents before them. This has the ironic effect of preserving the immense richness of Italy's culinary heritage, which is fabulous for the itinerant tourist, while at the same time making it pretty boring eating if you're stuck somewhere for any length of time. There's no Indian, Chinese, Vietnamese, French, Spanish, what have you, by way of contrast in the average Italian town.

Enough of sober reflection. I went into action with chunks of monkfish wrapped in strips of something called lardo di Colonnata, which is pure pork fat, albeit cured, and lentils; followed by gnocchi alla papera, alla papera being duck sauce; followed by rabbit stuffed with pancetta; followed by cheese. Bob kept pace with roast scallops with pancetta and fried gnocchi; ravioli filled with zampone (pig's trotters), with lentils and scampi; and then the porchetta, or roast pork, with the gatto di patate; and then he fell by the wayside when it came to a fourth course.

The cooking, whether of the central ingredients or of the bits with knobs on, was very accomplished, and sat easily with the crisp modernity of the interior. The pasta dishes were both superb. The gnocchi were small, soft and light, the sauce rich and sweetly meaty. The ravioli were delicate and the sauce earthy, the apparently odd combination of pork, shellfish and lentils actually working in well-ordered harmony. What is more, you could actually taste the pasta in each dish which, now I come to think about it, I could not do at Fifteen (reviewed the other week) because the saucing was so copious. Pasta is not simply a vehicle for a sauce. It should be an active component in the dish.

The first courses were very good, too, even if they weren't taken from the textbook of mamma's own recipes. The lardo played a useful part in keeping the monkfish succulent, and the graininess of the lentils, again, balanced the richness of the dish. The scallops were sweet, the pancetta crisp and the gnocchi, large and fat, made for modulated contrasts in textures. Both made very fine eating.

I wasn't so certain about my rabbit dish. It was a variation, I would guess, on coniglio in porchetta, classic of the Marche. That title is rather misleading because, far from it being coniglio in porchetta, the porchetta is in coniglio, rabbit stuffed with pork and wild fennel. The wild fennel is very particular but, sadly, unavailable in Marylebone at this time of year. The Eddalino version simply lacked the punch and clarity of the great original. It was a bit of an all-purpose rabbit dish, with a sweet sauce with too much tomato in it, as well as a completely irrelevant slice of grilled tomato perched on top of a little tower of potato slices.

Bob's porchetta was an altogether superior mouthful. For a start, it was utterly simple - just two substantial slices of pork curled on the plate, with the potato off to one side. The flavour of the meat was pure, and kept tender and toothsome by a substantial layer of fat beneath the immaculately crisp crackling. It was a dish to make you delight in the wonder of simplicity.

I needed some cheese to help finish our bottle of excellent Taurasi. Eddalino is unusual in that it makes something of a fuss about its cheeseboard and while, with majestic exceptions, I'm not sure Italian cheeses have the character or quality of our own, the ovifort, a blue cheese from Sardinia, rustico from the Veneto, pecorino stagionato from Tuscany and toma from Piedmont were very fine, and served with truffle-infused honey.

The bill was £124.20, and included three Camparis, one grappa, one digestivo, one bottle of wine at £27.50, two coffees and a bottle of water, all of which amounted to £62.60. The food, then, was £61.60, making this a classic example of Fort's law of restaurant bill. So, you will pay roughly £30 a head at Eddalino - cheaper than at Fifteen, say - for a very suave, and generally very pleasing, experience.

· Open Lunch, Mon-Fri, 12 noon-3pm; dinner, Mon-Sat, 6.30- 10.45pm. Menus: £22 for two courses, £27 for three, £32 for four. Wheelchair access.