Lardo - restaurant review

 If I lived near Lardo, I would probably shout about it, says Nick Curtis
Lardo: the Italian love-child of former Bistrotheque manager Eliza Flanagan

If you live in the bit of London I call South Central, life can seem unfair. Though we are better served with restaurants than latterly, with the Brunswick House Café, The Canton Arms and the new eateries of Brixton Market filling a once yawning void, we don’t get achingly hip neighbourhood joints opening every four minutes like they do in Hackney.

The squillionth this year, serving the herds of etiolated ponces roaming London Fields, is Lardo. The name refers to the cured pig fat of Tuscany, rather than something you’d shout at an overweight person. But if I lived near Lardo, I would probably shout about it.

The restaurant’s look is retro-industrial basic. My impression is that all the money went on the great, bejewelled scarab of a pizza oven that squats in the metalframed window. A smiley antipodean waitress pegged us as interlopers and seated us at the table not only nearest the loos but underneath a waste pipe. Unfair, see?

Never mind. Lardo is the Italian love-child of former Bistrotheque manager Eliza Flanagan, and offers homecured meats for around £4, small sharing plates for around £6, and pizza for up to £9. We chose one of the latter and built a meal around it. Bright, cleanly astringent olives and fine-sliced, buttery chilli coppa kept us going through our bitter lemon cocktails (gin, lime, mint, sugar, bitters, £4.50, new favourite thing). Wonderfully fresh, melting flakes of smoked swordfish were nicely offset by salmoriglio, a dressing of lemon, olive oil, garlic and fresh herbs.

Fried Arancini rice balls had a nice kick of heat from soft N’duja sausage in the centre but the mozzarella mixed with it wasn’t quite melted. Another minute’s cooking, perhaps. Broad beans with Pecorino came with zingy mint and lemon and, I think, dandelion leaves, which added a nice bitter undertone. I’d say this was the best-executed dish we had if it weren’t for the pizza. The flavour of fine slices of courgette fruit and flower leapt off a base that was thin, crisp and just charred at the edge as I like it, accompanied by mellifluous goat’s curd and little sudden, salty detonations of anchovy.

We also had a bottle of Picpoul at £24.50 from the short, sensible wine list, an achingly moist pistachio cake, and a grapefruit granita. Service is added to the bill but goes directly to the staff, which is nice and easy. Even with that and two more glasses of wine we got out for under £100. A cab home would probably have doubled the evening’s cost, though. Unfair, see?

Lardo, 205 Richmond Road, E8 (020 8985 2683; lardo.co.uk). Open Mon-Fri 8am-10.30pm, Sat 10am-10.30pm Sat, Sun 10am-9.30pm. A meal for two with cocktails and wine, about £100

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