Briciole, 20 Homer Street, London.

When is a restaurant not a restaurant? When it's trying to be several other things at once. I may have bent your ears before about restaurants which are "also" breakfast cafés, tea-rooms, local-produce shops, off-licences, children's rumpus-rooms, and places where "you just drop in for a glass of wine and a few nibbles". I've heard every combination, and they seldom work: it's like training a shire horse to go out and be a thoroughbred the next day and take kids on beach rides the day after.

Briciole, an attractive new eating-house which used to be the Honey Pot pub near Edgware Road Tube, is a case in point. It flags itself as 'an Italian trattoria, café-bar and deli under one roof'. Its company logo shows cartoon Italian breads rampaging about (and making crumbs, or 'briciole') and calls itself 'ristorante gastronomia'. My first impression, on walking in, was of a bright and cheerful deli – the gastronomia – behind which was a fabulous array of wines and a chap languorously carving slices from a salumeria. My friend Jon and I perched on stools while the maître d', Umberto Tosi, a charmer with a Father Ted hairstyle, brought our drinks with murmurs of "No-rush-no-rush-your-table-is-ready-anytime" in that relaxed Italian way.

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