Jimi Famurewa tucks into sandwiches at Mozzasando

Jimi Famurewa tucks in to a lunch that’s lost in translation at new sandwich bar Mozzasando
Mozzasando
Jimi Famurewa @jimfam19 March 2020

Ambience: 2/5

Food: 3/5

There can perhaps be no greater sign of Alan Yau’s clout as a restaurateur than the fact that Mozzasando, his extended bong hit of a new concept, actually exists. I do not think, for instance, that I would have been able to inspire the same confidence in a Milanese-influenced katsu sando bar in South Kensington. In fact, scratch that. I feel certain that if I ran a potential investor through the finer points of this idea — the expensive fit-out, the nebulously Japanese signature menu item that has to be continually explained to most customers, the servers all wearing branded black boiler suits as if they are about to start belting out ‘Greased Lightnin’’ — I would find myself briskly escorted from the premises by security.

But, of course, I did not come up with this vogueish tilt at a possible new high street chain; Yau, the justly revered hospitality genius who created Wagamama, Hakkasan and the forthcoming, hotly anticipated Chyna, did. And so, Mozzasando is not merely a drunken plan hatched in the back of an Uber. It is a very real, all-in bet on Yau’s abilities as a restaurant whisperer; a handsomely rendered, gleaming netherworld of muddled cultural splicing that is also, confusingly, not fully the total disaster you might anticipate.

That said, things had a kind of social experiment strangeness from early on. I arrived for lunch at its red-awninged corner berth on the former site of an Obicá mozzarella bar (it is, in a sense, a very involved relaunch) to find my wife and her mate, Becky, sporting thin, nervous smiles in a mostly abandoned arena of sharp-angled counters and sumptuous stools in buttery, ox blood red leather. A crazily high number of kitchen staff were being trained and there was a serious-looking manager, stepping up from his laptop occasionally to pace and glower.

The sando

But then, unexpectedly, a quietly impressive burrata salad appeared at the table, packing useful little cubes of compressed melon and a zinging, herbaceous slap of fresh pesto. Chilli fries, too — a nest of crispy chips, thickly ladled with a piquant, rich Wagyu beef and nduja ragu — were strangely diverting. And then, with the quietest of drumrolls, we were on to the focaccia sandos (‘It’s the Japanese word for sandwich,’ blurted our eager waitress).

Now, though I feel the silly hysteria around these expensive, crustless monuments to the photogenic tyranny of the Instagram age could prompt a Falling Down moment in some of my fellow food critics, I am mostly in favour of them if they are done well. The two we ordered from the skeletal menu, however (a ‘Cotoletta Milanese’ with thin, pulverised veal escalope and saccharine onion marmalade, and a ‘Fake Milanese’ with admittedly succulent chicken) were mostly shrug-worthy affairs that brought to mind club sandwiches dropped in a trouser press.

But then pudding ushered in a creamy San Sebastian burnt cheesecake (that famous, um, Italian dessert) that was so unexpectedly, intensely pleasurable that it made us all a bit hysterical. This came alongside a creditable tiramisu and a disastrous, overly eggy ‘ciambelle fritte’ doughnut that was taken off the bill.

It was, in a way, the perfect mixed-bag of an ending for a uniquely weird lunch, a pricey, work-in-progress combo of occasional accomplished cooking and conceptually shaky bandwagon-chasing. You will definitely know what a sando is when you leave Yau’s strange new venture. Whether you’ll feel any great desire to eat one again is another matter.

Mozzasando

1 Burrata salad £12

2 Fake Milanese sando £19

1 Cotoletta Milanese sando £12.50

1 Chilli fries £10.50

1 Tiramisu £6.50

1 Cheesecake £7.50

1 Ciambelle fritte £9.50

1 Aranciata Polara soda £3

1 Berry-gen smoothie £11.50

1 Limonata Galvanina soda £5

1 Green tea £3.50

1 English breakfast tea £3.50

1 Americano £3.50

1 Dessert taken off bill -£9.50

Total £98

96 Draycott Avenue, Chelsea, SW3​ (020 3146 2261)

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