The worst areas to eat in London are the best places to live. Hampstead, Chelsea, Chiswick, St John’s Wood: all would be lucky to have even one restaurant that would be an 8/10 in Hackney. This is disappointing because Hackney is annoying, but, hey, hipsters make good restaurants.
I wonder why these areas are so lacking. Is it because St John’s Wood Man has an underpaid cook on speed dial? Is it because Belgravian Influencer orders a shawarma every night? Is it because Hampstead Family don’t eat where they sh– hmm, yes…
A little bruschetta of chopped rabbit livers comes next, visible through a translucent sheet of lardo
Whatever the explanation, the exception to this rule is Wandsworth Common. Here, there are some absolute giants (my theory is that Wandsworth is more right-wing-coded, and right-wingers are happier to do the three-course-three-bottles thing). The best is Chez Bruce, which sits on the site of Harvey’s, Marco Pierre White’s old place. Chez Bruce is a monster of a restaurant: yep, we’ll serve Pierre Koffmann’s stuffed pig’s trotter; yep, we’ll wheel out a board of 21 cheeses. It’s a vision of what was considered brilliant in the 1980s. It vindicates that era’s cooking, and it doubles up as a kind of burgundy bunker to protect its diners from the assaults of modernity.
Rosina sits a few doors down, staring at that slightly austere common. It’s the new opening by Adam Byatt, the chef most inspiring junior cooks. Look him up on YouTube, where he posts his cooking videos, and swoon. Before Byatt, Instagram reels were dominated by young men with moustaches and perma-wet hair, cooking the same kind of placeless thing: it’s butter beans, it’s pork on rice, it’s pork on rice but with butter beans. One can imagine Byatt watching this, running his hands through his lovely silver hair, and going: ‘Screw that, I’m making a coq au vin.’ His most recent video is a charming tease: the idea that I, if I follow his steps, can make a Michelin-level duck à l’orange.
Of course, I can’t, so that is why I am at Rosina. Byatt is best known for his Clapham restaurant Trinity, which has one star. It’s French-leaning, proud of its sauces, but it’s always looked a bit parsimonious. No such problems at Rosina, which sees Byatt trying Italian food. I don’t get the impression this place is going for a star, thank goodness. It’s been given a lot of thought, though. You can watch a beautifully filmed five-part YouTube series of him travelling through Italy finding the best olive oil and mortadella and rice, but I didn’t.
A £2.50 cover charge gets you bread, breadsticks, olives, olive oil and Amalfi lemon. From there, we get a plate of mortadella (£7), enough to stuff a shoebox. Not the cheap luncheon meat stuff we all dread, but folds of something of a considerable porkiness. A little bruschetta of chopped rabbit livers comes next, visible through a translucent sheet of lardo, all underneath some fuzzy sage (£6).
A datterini tomato salad (£8) is also gorgeous. It comes with nectarine, mozzarella and basil, but the really lovely thing is the tomatoes have been peeled, thus softer, thus more vivid. An attention-seeking white risotto with an egg yolk (£20) is good, but more enjoyable to look at than eat (rice just too soft). Better was mezze maniche with a red veal, pork and beef ragù (£20), which, interestingly, seemed to have been baked in an oven. Roast turbot with wilted greens, capers and lemon (£38) was a wonderful main for a neighbourhood restaurant: meet my expectations; don’t confound them. Tiramisu (£7) came from a tray, and with that, Rosina achieved perfection.
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