Rating: 9/10
Telephone: 020-7493 7050
Address: 23 Conduit Street, London W1
Open: Mon-Sat, lunch, noon-3pm (Sat, 12.30-3pm); dinner, 6.30-11pm
Price: Set menu only: £19.50 for two courses, £24.50 for three, £29.50 for four
As a resident of the lively west London locale of Shepherds Bush, I cling to the fantasy that one day the forces of gentrification that have given us such a wide berth will produce a restaurant within walking distance in which we dare set foot without being tranquillised first. The closest thing we have is a Nando's where a man was shot a few years ago, crawled to his car and expired before driving through the window of the estate agent's opposite. It says something pertinent about the area that the local paper described him as "a ram-raider".
A really cracking neighbourhood restaurant is everyone's dream, of course, but the very last place you'd expect one is a hyper-chic shopping street in Mayfair, next door to the bespoke bra makers Rigby & Peller, long-term cossetters of the Queen's breasts, and bang opposite Vivienne Westwood, who has had few dealings with the sovereign since Her Majesty's short-lived punk phase in the Jubilee year of 1977.
If Via Condotti's name speaks for itself, being both a namesake of Rome's most celebrated shopping street and a literal translation of this Mayfair one, its presence here, serving great regional Italian cooking at such low prices, is a mystery.
Passing lightly over the one obvious flaw (it was so dimly lit that the old cry of "Infrared nightfinders to table six" almost went up), what we could squint of the room suggested a handsome space with blond wood floors, leather banquettes and off-white walls dotted with posters. The service from cool, young, apron-clad staff was slick and attentive, the all-Italian wine list is well thought out, and from the moment we set about the plump green olives and impeccable focaccia, the suspicion took hold that this place is almost too good to be true.
I wasn't that wild about my starter, because although my gnochetti with a rabbit ragu was beautifully seasoned, some bits of pasta were far enough the wrong side of al dente for use as makeshift slingshot. However, everyone else raved about theirs. Chicken consommé tortellini was a "really delicious broth", while minestrone was "a complete eye-opener ... it's amazingly clean and delicate, not the usual mush at all, and you can actually taste the broccoli". Pick of the bunch, though, was cured beef on a bed of celeriac laced with lemon juice, and richly praised both for taste and the sparkling texture produced by mingling such crunchy vegetables with such thin, tender meat.
We were discussing the astonishing extent of cosmetic surgery seemingly evident from the face of an elegant woman at a nearby table (though, in this light, it might have been Andrew Neil) when the main courses arrived to confirm that this is gutsy, rustic regional cooking (the chef, Pasquale Amico, is Neapolitan) of a very high order.
Roasted monkfish in a tomatoey crust tasted great, albeit the alluringly meaty texture had been slightly compromised, but ravioli filled with smoked scamorza cheese and a sauce of sundried tomato and basil was "so original and fresh-tasting... just superb". And chargrilled garfish, a weird-looking beast with the nose of a swordfish and the flavour of a herring with attitude, worked wonderfully with a zingy fennel salad. The "millefoglie Via Condotti" (millefeuille in English) we shared for pud was ultra-creamy, crispy and utterly majestic.
The presence as owner of Claudio Pulze (discoverer of Gordon Ramsay and Giorgio Locatelli) adds to the bewilderment about the prices - there are half-a-dozen proprietors of provincial restaurants serving filthy food at twice the price that I intend to round up, in the Child Catcher's cart from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, and bring here for a tutorial. If so excellent and imaginative a three-course dinner can be served here for two bob less than a pony (younger readers may Google these currency terms at their convenience), what conceivable excuse can there be?
As we left, we offered our friends a lift, but they said it was a very brief walk to their Soho loft. Overwhelmed by nausea, we bade them a brusque good night and headed sullenly home.
