I've been eating in a lot of spartan, hole-in-the-wall restaurants lately. Places where the furniture is reclaimed from an old factory, the staff are reclaimed from a Kooples poster, and you can eat anything you like, as long as it's a big hunk of meat.
Don't get me wrong – it's great that London has got its own scruffy, borderline-fetishistic dining scene. But sometimes, as a break from all this gastro-machismo, wouldn't it be nice to go somewhere pretty and be treated like a laydee?
Aurelia is just the place for that. Depending on your perspective, it's a reminder of the old days, when ladies were made to feel special and the gentlemen paid the bill. Or it's a ridiculous throwback to a past geological era – the Permatan period, perhaps – when Continental restaurant managers flirted gamely with ladies of a certain age, while white-jacketed barmen conjured up overpriced Bellinis.
Aurelia is the latest thoroughbred from the family-run stable that includes Zuma, Roka and La Petite Maison, and its modern Mediterranean cooking is apparently inspired by the Aurelian Way, the Roman coastal road to Spain.
Posh Italian, in other words, with a side order of Jamon Iberico. But head chef Rosie Yeats has spent the past few years cooking modern Japanese food at Roka, so Aurelia promises to be more than just another upmarket Mayfair trattoria, even if the Aurelian Way never made it as far as Kyoto.
Read more at http://www.independent.co.uk/
No comments:
Post a Comment