As someone who travels too much, the place I always come back to is Sicily, specifically the south-east, with its baroque towns of heartbreaking loveliness, each church a shimmering hosanna, each alleyway a moody poster shot. Narnia-fertile volcanic soil produces food that reminds you of the first time you ate something: datterini tomatoes so sweet and fragrant, you pop them like cherries; pistachios from Bronte that make every other pistachio taste like dust; olive oil alive with peppery vigour. This cucina povera makes you feel like the richest, luckiest bastard on Earth.
So a restaurant billed as coming from Slow Food-tipped company Tasting Sicily, and headed up by Enzo Oliveri, a Palermitano and “president of the federation of Italian chefs in the UK”, would appear to have my name through it like a stick of rock. Who cares if it’s in that Hell-London behind Piccadilly infested by helmet-headed dowagers looking for Mamma Mia? Who wouldn’t forgive them a decor as subtle as a Dolce & Gabbana revamp of Trump Tower? But migraine from pictures of Sicilian life in colours so violent, they’re seared on my retinas, isn’t the greatest whet for the appetite. Nor is being seated under a vast TV on which the titular Enzo cavorts with Aldo Zilli and Paul Hollywood. Never mind appetite-suppressant, if there’s anything likely to give me the hot boak, it’s that duo on a loop.
Our starters arrive, and the emetic nature of our surroundings is thoroughly upstaged. Fritto misto features Sicily’s legendary red prawns so over-fried, they could be crabsticks. The menu is obsessed with Andrea Camilleri’s fictional Sicilian Inspector Montalbano: “L’Arancina del Commissario con panelle e crocchette”: £8.50 for a selection of fried items whose entire production costs must come to, ooh, a few pence, all limp with grease. Flabby panelle (chickpea pancakes), potato croquettes that would make Birds Eye cringe, arancini (Sicily’s beloved fried rice balls) a soggy squelch of gluey starch – you could use these babies to create busts of Lionel Richie. This all comes on a board with half a baby plum tomato and rocket leaves so knackered, they’re basically compost.
A mixed antipasti board careers wildly from excellent (salumi and prosciutto from the famed Nebrodi black pigs) to grim (sickly caponata; peculiar, sugary pumpkin; and crostini so ossified, they could have been dug up around Agrigento’s ruins). Plus, astonishingly, a tangle of boiled, oiled tenerumi (stems and tendrils of the cucuzza squash). I’ve never seen these bitter greens outside their homeland: kudos. Mains are dismissably dreary: breaded chicken, lamb shanks with mashed potato, also apparently a favourite of our amico Montalbano. Uh-huh.
But wait, what’s this? Sandwiched between this sadness are pastas that are actually pretty damned fine. “Chef Enzo’s signature” is casarecce with Nebrodi guanciale and Bronte pistachios. I’ve eaten this fabulous porker stuffed with wild herbs and baked whole in a vast, wood-fired oven in its native mountains, and it was one of the great eating experiences of my life. Unsurprisingly, this doesn’t come close, but the dense pasta is al dente, the guanciale suave with fat and the pistachios the alluring grey-green of the real Bronte item. Pasta del Commissario Montalbano – yes, him again – brings wriggly bucatini thrumming with the gigantic flavours of sardines and wild fennel sweetened with onions, raisins and pine nuts. It whisks me straight to Taormina. (I bloody wish.)
Staff are sweet but doolally: glasses are dropped, dishes forgotten. We order an expensive, gorgeous wine (the list is another surprise, studded with Sicilian beauties), Nozze d’Oro, by Tasca D’Almerita, a lush, aromatic insolia/sauvignon blanc “marriage” created to mark the late count’s golden wedding anniversary. It’s a little warm and we ask for an ice bucket. The waiter brings one, then attempts to plonk the ice into our glasses.
This really is the most peculiar place, like a theme restaurant opened by a junior functionary at the Sicilian tourist board who has never been to London. “Discover history through regional food,” they instruct us. Certainly, our exhausted, bendy cannoli taste less filled “al momento” and more “anni fa”. And, for £60 a head, I’d rather jump on Ryanair. Then I could sit at Satra, facing our chum Montalbano’s headquarters, and eat the real real thing.
• Enzo’s Kitchen 38 Panton Street, London SW1, 020-7839 5142. Open Mon-Sat 8am-11.30pm; 11am-11pm Sun. About £35 a head plus drinks and service.
Food 3/10 (7/10 for the pasta)
Atmosphere 3/10
Value for money 4/10
Atmosphere 3/10
Value for money 4/10
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