Stormingly good: the main dining room at Cavita
(Picture: Adrian Lourie)Look, this review was not meant to start like this. After weeks of touching on the operational turbulence that every new restaurant seems to be experiencing in some form — namely, the overstretched teams, under-trained servers and hurriedly configured rooms that mean even good meals threaten to descend into prank show calamity — I had personally banned myself from referring to it. Everyone is struggling. We all know that, as it stands, the world of hospitality is in a rictus scramble to recreate pre-pandemic bonhomie without the necessary staffing capacity to do so. There is no need for me to labour that point every week.
But then at Cavita in Marylebone I nipped to the loo early on to be met by not just the overpowering smell of recently applied paint (a week-and-a-half after the place had opened), but two abandoned brushes balanced on a urinal. It felt like a perfect encapsulation of the current mad, flapping panic to be ready; the ideal visual metaphor should this ultimately prove to be another well-meaning opening that felt a little rush-released and flawed.
