One challenge for the weekly restaurant reviewer is that several times a year you’re expected to produce riveting prose on the basic art of eating pasta in a room painted in contrasting beiges. Not that I’m complaining about eating pasta; it’s almost unthinkable not to worship the stuff. Pasta is so delicious that I’ve even heard modern nutritionists describe it as more of a “social activity” than mere sustenance: all those lovely, starchy carbs with cream, oil and/or butter gliding down your throat, making you feel full and loved, but not a huge amount of vitamin K, omega-3s or anything else that may help you live to 100.
And, judging from the sight of a full restaurant on a wet Tuesday lunchtime, I am guessing that many of Notto’s customers that day had briefly considered longevity and instead opted for a luscious bowl of handmade strozzapreti (AKA priest chokers) with black truffles, mushroom stock, parmesan and butter, or pappardelle with oxtail and beef shin slow-cooked in red wine, and a mascarpone blood orange panna cotta for afters.
Notto is an elegant, mid-price pasta joint that feels to me like a prototype for a potential dozen more Nottos up and down the land. It isn’t remotely revolutionary or gimmicky, and there’s no big twist on pasta, but what it does have is a menu by Phil Howard and Louis Korovilas, two chefs I rate very highly. Howard is one of those chef’s chefs, who worked at Harvey’s with Marco Pierre White and Bibendum with Simon Hopkinson before opening The Square, where he got two Michelin stars. His Chelsea restaurant Elystan Street is stonkingly good, though a double-baked, cave-aged cheddar soufflé will set you back £32 and an oxtail raviolo a mere £30, so maybe find someone to take you.
Everything at Elystan Street is delicious, but also exceedingly expensive, so the news that Notto offers slightly more pocket-friendly pasta is thrilling. Especially because Korovilas is also on board. I first chanced upon him at Bancone in Covent Garden, a reliably lovely restaurant now close to my family’s heart. Pasta is safe in these chefs’ hands, even if there is very little at Notto to get het up about. It’s just good, fresh pasta cooked in an open kitchen. It’s certainly nothing like the recently opened Jacuzzi in Kensington, part of the Big Mamma group that also runs Gloria, Circolo Popolare and Ave Mario , a gargantuan, mock-Italian mansion with added puttanesca con tonno crudo, a “disco toilet” with a mirror ball and 100 exuberant Italian servers, some of whom recreated the Last Supper for the launch.
No, the semi-organised chaos of TikTok playpen Jacuzzi is a million miles from staid old Notto, which feels more like somewhere you’d take a visiting aunt or someone with whom you actually want to talk properly. I went with my friend Hugh, and we stayed almost three hours, righting the wrongs of modern life over shared bowls of rather good, utterly devourable rigatoni cacio e pepe, the aforementioned pappardelle, which was a fine example of this now rather commonly found classic, and a very interesting campanelle, which was vegan, though you’d never have guessed it, because it was swimming in a ludicrously rich concoction of winter greens, soft red onion, garlic, chilli, capers and a generous glug of quality olive oil. Marvellous.
Drinkers may like the grapefruit negroni or the signature cocktail, the Notto 198, which features bourbon, champagne, lemon juice and absinthe. Being the type of woman who plans to live longer than a giant Galápagos tortoise, I was on their sparkling filtered water included in the £1.50 cover fee, but, even so, it was impossible not to feel slightly louche when tackling the grissini with melted lardo di colonnata from the snacks section. Three long breadsticks are wrapped in pale pink pork fat, dusted in parmesan and served, comically, upright and impossible to eat and stay remotely lady-like.
On balance, there were no huge fails at Notto and I’ll keep it up my sleeve for a return visit some time. Sure, there’s the same shrink-flation going on here as in all other restaurants right now – burrata with winter leaves, for example, was in fact half a small cheese that didn’t ooze, and wild mushroom “arancini” – note the plural – turned out to be a singular, albeit delicious arancino. Pudding was a “chocolate and hazelnut cream” that was essentially a small bowl of pleasant mousse; not to be sniffed at, but nothing to write home about, either, especially from a dessert menu that has only two options other than vanilla or chocolate ice-cream.
Notto is very much a restaurant opening of its time: a hopeful and confident debut in a landscape where diners still dearly want to eat out at smaller, serious restaurants, but at the same time have to accept shorter menus and cost-vigilant dishes. We live in uncertain times, but I wish Notto well. If these really are the last days of Rome, we may as well go down eating pasta.
Notto 198 Piccadilly, London W1, 020-3034 2190. Open Mon-Sat, lunch noon-3pm, dinner 5-10pm; Sun noon-8pm. About £30 a head for three courses, plus drinks and service
