THIS RESTAURANT IS CLOSED Stefano Cavallini at The Halkin

THIS RESTAURANT IS CLOSED Stefano Cavallini at The Halkin Restaurant Review:

In this age of TV, celebrity and super-chefs, it’s refreshing to find a top-flight chef who keeps doing exactly what he does best. The cuisine is Italian, not of the trattoria-style, tomato sauce-with-everything sort, but of the uncompromisingly Italian sort and, as such, it’s some of the best in London. Proper Italian ingredients, such as mostarda (a fruit and mustard preserve) and bottarga (grated grey mullet roe) are menu staples. Pasta dishes (such as chocolate pasta with pigeon and potato sauce) are wonderful, the own-made pasta feather light. But it is perhaps the quality of the sauces that goes furthest in proving Cavallini’s prowess as an outstanding chef. The red wine sauce with the fillet of beef in a salt crust was beautifully reduced to the point of perfect unctuousness, without being cloying. The dining room at The Halkin is at the comfortable end of the minimalist spectrum and designer-clad service is of a very high standard. Such precision comes at a price (about £100-plus for two), but the food is memorable. Set 3-course lunch £23; set 5-course dinner £55.