10 April 2012

Frith Street is littered with restaurants, and it seems as if every month sees another one close only to reopen having been refurbed and retargeted on the latest gastro-trend. Amid all this fashionability, Alastair Little's place potters along. For decades Little's eponymous restaurant has pursued its own sweet way, serving delicious Anglo-Italian Mediterranean food to knowledgeable customers. Now the kitchen is so skilful and practised that it can do Little's idiosyncratic food as well as he does himself, which is handy as he spends more and more time at his cooking school in Italy.

For a Brit, Alastair Little has had a disproportionate influence on the way we see Italian food; without him preaching the doctrine of fresh, top-quality, seasonal ingredients you have to wonder whether London's Modern British and Italian restaurants would have progressed so far from spag bol and giant peppermills. Eating at Alastair Little's is a set-price affair ? lunch is £25 for three courses or two with coffee, dinner is £33 for three courses. You get to choose from eight starters, five or six mains and half a dozen puds. The menu changes to suit what is freshest at the markets, and as often as it has to. The dining-room is modern and plain; this was the forerunner of all those wooden-floored, spartan establishments. Service is efficient in an informal way. The food is geared towards people who relish strong flavours and simple, satisfying combinations of taste and texture.

To start, you may be offered a bourride of seafood ? a delightful bowlful, plenty of chunky fish and shellfish in a well-flavoured soup. The house bread (which is vital with the bourride) is superb. Fresh foccacia. Or you may find a classic dish like the Piedmontese peppers, the recipe for which is found in a host of books from Franco Taruschio to Delia Smith. At Little's they have an additional twist by way of cheese melted into the roasted pepper. More ambitious starters show off kitchen skills: grilled pigeon breast, French beans, saut?ed potatoes and pancetta teams perfectly judged rare pigeon with crisp pancetta and green beans ? very good indeed.

Main-course dishes are well thought out ? roast plaice steak with mash and shrimp sauce is a tour de force. It is difficult to get hold of a plaice large enough to cut into tranches, it is even more difficult to judge the cooking time so that it doesn't turn to mush. The sweet shrimp sauce makes a perfect foil. Pasta dishes are very Italian in style (less is more), so ricotta and spinach ravioli may come with sage butter. On a more trad French note, calf's liver persillade with potato cake is a simple dish done well, and roast breast of chicken with peas, broad beans and button onions would be at home on many a Sunday lunch table. Or how about grilled fillet of sea bass, Turkish chilli relish and couscous tabouleh? The wheat couscous has a great texture and the relish works well with the fish.

Afters veer from panacotta with apricot sauce, to bitter chocolate tarte with espresso ice-cream to raspberry semi-freddo torte with berry compote, but include British cheeses with oatcakes. This is a very enlightened place to eat; rather than sticking rigidly to any particular nationalistic formula, they stick to a principle ? that you should select top-quality, fresh ingredients and bring out the best in them. It's no wonder that this restaurant has lasted so long, and is the jewel in Frith Street's crown.

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