Bocca Di Lupo

Met J for dinner for the first time not knowing what to expect, but it turned out to be a rather nice evening getting well acquainted with interesting morsels brought over from several parts of Italy to titillate our tastebuds.

For starters, we picked out what we felt would be a nice introduction to what this establishment had to offer: the raw sea bream, langoustine and scallop with rosemary oil (top, left), fried artichoke a la Guida (above), and the foccacia with lung & spleen simmered in lard and smoked ricotta (top, right). All very exotic sounding and made for good conversation.

The scallop was noteworthy, tasting quite sweet and succulent. I had expected the artichoke to arrive fried in batter as I had had it in Rome, but this was an equally nice version as it was crisp on the outside and juicy in the middle, with the tang of crushed sea salt hitting the tongue every now and then. Foccacia, ricotta and spleen was a very tasty, creamy arrangement, and only the lung required some effort to consume due to its unusual springy texture.

Next we shared the roast suckling pig, which had melt-in-the-mouth meat, but a slightly dismal crackling that made me look less demure sawing at it haha. This was accompanied by some sauteed girolles. Sorry, in our efforts to savour it while it was hot, I had forgotten to take a picture of it!

Dessert comprised of two hits and a miss. We had the bombe calde - a freshly fried donut filled with chocolate cream, ricotta cheese with fragolino grapes and wet walnuts, and chocolate and marzipan balls filled with rum raisins (below).

While it tasted like a typical Italian dessert, that much marzipan was probably more than a non-italian (or two) could handle. But this was more than made up for in the fragolino grapes! Fragolino means little strawberries in italian, but it hardly came close to describing the amazing burst of summery flavours it produced in the mouth. Supermarket-bought grapes will never taste as good again... Cracking the wet walnuts posed as a challenge to two amateur nutcrackers, but it was quite rewarding getting the last few out in one piece (below).

photographs taken on J's DSLR

Will definitely be going back to familiarize ourselves with the rest of the menu. Reservations are recommended!

Bocca di Lupo

12 Archer Street
London
W1D 7BB