Lots of restaurants are beautiful. Lots of them perform the strange, mysterious conjuring trick of turning what is essentially an oblong of brickwork into a richly-detailed aesthetic fantasy. But I really feel that we may need a whole new descriptive lexicon to do justice to the way that Leo’s, a new Italian bar and restaurant on Chatsworth Road in Clapton, carefully evokes a specific time, place and mood.
Beyond the weather-beaten mosaic of its tiled exterior and ersatz Fifties sign, there is a portal to a romanticised past; a sustained act of Italian make-believe etched in wood-panelling, tubular steel modernist furnishings, framed vintage adverts, newspapers clipped to a rail, and the sweet-edged nimbus of wood smoke that scents the main dining room.
Yes, the impact has a lot to do with the handsome old bones of what used to be Jim’s Cafe (a storied Sixties Italian caff turned biker-themed, haute greasy spoon). But it is also a giveaway that the masterful, detail-oriented vibe-setters behind Juliet’s Quality Foods in Tooting are also involved here. Throw in the pedigree of chef-founder Peppe Belvedere — formerly of P. Franco, Brawn and Bright — and you can see why Leo’s is already drawing rapt notices from seemingly everyone in the industry.
So why, as I approach the meat of this review, do I feel like I’m about to ever-so-slightly let the air out of this ostensibly irresistible balloon? Simply put, it is because some of the food we had at a recent midweek meal felt, well, a touch discordant and ordinary. Multiple dishes trafficked in memorable, unalloyed thrills; the skill level of Belvedere and his kitchen team is clearly sky-scrapingly high. Even so, not for the first time this year, my abiding feeling was of a short, menu eliciting lots of intrigue but, also, a nagging urge for an actual dinner.
The first moments were a breathless whirl of good bread, better wine (La Roche Buissiere’s luscious Petite Jeanne from a varied, low-intervention-leaning list) and cured Sardinian pork fillet: ruby-red swatches of house charcuterie given a fragrant dousing of new season olive oil. Crespelle, rustic crepes filled with walnut sauce and chicory, had the heavy embellishment of bubbled stracchino cheese and a kind of sinful, late-night appeal. Fresh fregola (the hand-sieved, couscous-like pasta) thickened an arti-choke-laden, saffron-flecked broth. But braised rabbit agnolotti belied an oddly flat, processed flavour.
Belvedere originally hails from Sardinia and Leo’s is clearly an expression of cultural pride rather than any nervous pandering to British palates. The issue is the degree to which certain regional specialities work when shorn of context. To fill tramezzini — cheap, crustless finger sandwiches that stir an acute, misty-eyed affection in homesick Italians — with a vitello tonnato-indebted pork and tuna mix is inspired. But it doesn’t make the reality of nibbling at a picnic-ready, £11 trio of little sarnies feel any less weird. Or, as one friend put it afterwards, like being on a “Wernham Hogg away day”.
My abiding feeling was of a short, menu eliciting lots of intrigue but, also, a nagging urge for an actual dinner
Again, I’m moved to point out that these felt like side effects of a menu that only features a dozen or so cooked items, tends towards the snacky and perhaps doesn’t really lend itself to a sharing concept. It is also very early days. And the two mains that we had — a delicate, rare-cooked fillet of wild sea bass on a glassy, perhaps overly subtle “l’acqua pazza” seafood broth, plus lamb saddle, edged in crackling and draped over with sweet, roasted red peppers — showed what the kitchen can do with expansive secondi. What’s more, we finished, on an unequivocal high, with tiramisu.
Left over from the separate daytime menu served in the bar, it was a beautifully constructed, weightlessly fluffy marvel of cream and the pronounced, leavening bitterness of sprinkled ground coffee. And a reminder that, in an inherited room for the ages, Leo’s still has the potential to make its own history.
