An Italian restaurant created by French people has arrived in a “new” part of central London, or at least a bit of it that now has a brand new name thanks to the recent bulldozing and reimagining of part of Soho. Ilona Rose House, anyone? The name hardly rolls off the tongue, does it, but it describes the many thousands of square feet of land more or less behind Greek Street that consists of work spaces, art installations and, more relevant to this column, a mews with alfresco dining. You enter via an archway on Greek Street, or via the equally new, spangly, hyper-modern Tottenham Court Road station, although right now you’ll still be treading through building sites, cooing at foxes cavorting in rubble and basically wondering: “Where the hell am I? None of this seems to be on the map.”
The developers have chucked just about everything they can at IIona Rose House to prettify this mega-priced patch of grade-A real estate. Milk Beach and Kapara opened here last year, and now there’s Daroco, a 120-seater Parisian import that serves fancy pizza, titivated pappardelle and hyped-up tiramisu. Yes, it may be selling mainly just pizza and pasta, but Daroco does so in a wildly ostentatious and unforgettable manner that I’m going to call acid art deco with a renaissance edge. Velour gilt banquettes perch under a mirrored, pleasure palace ceiling, and there are lots of plants, lots of brass, lots of staff in navy blue and an enormous disco pizza oven decorated with a whole flock of blue butterflies.
