Review at a glance: ★★★★★
Know your onions? Let’s see. Question one: what makes a perfect restaurant? Is it the food or the service? How about atmosphere? What is that, exactly — show your workings? Perhaps a perfect restaurant owes something to its decor, or maybe it’s all down to trickery with the lighting. Is greatness affected by price, location, how quickly martinis arrive? Some people I know — deviant restaurateurs mostly — think the hotness of the staff has something to do with it. Others insist it’s about the make-up of the crowd. Figuratively, I mean. But, well…
There’s no easy answer. The variables are too many: what passes for the right vibe in a pub would feel as wrong at a 14-seat sushi counter as having Napalm Death do a live set in the corner. Obsequious service sometimes suits chapels of fine-dining, but in other places feels like harassment. You shouldn’t wonder if you can file a restraining order on a waiter.
There is no formula because the service restaurants provide varies customer to customer, and customers differ day to day. Some come to eat, others for a night out. Some for fun, some for solace. Humans: truly, we’re contrary buggers. But we all recognise that the person blazing after an argument drinks for a different reason to the one celebrating a promotion. The best restaurants adjust, responding to need, want, to circumstance. They are as versatile as actors, only the costume never changes and no one has a script. One man who seems to be more keenly aware of all this than anyone is Martin Kuczmarski. Though no longer at the hotel, he’s the reason the Ned’s bathrooms are stocked not only with razors and toothbrushes but also tampons and condoms, and the room service offers underwear, for those caught in a bind. He has an instinct for any scenario that might arise. It’s a gift.
Kuczmarski is known best now for the Dover, which I hesitate to call London’s coolest restaurant for fear of tarnishing the fact that it is. Now he has moved to Sloane Square, a dust bowl for dining. Every restaurant here is crap. Yes, even Colbert. Here he has taken over what was a Hugo Boss on the corner opposite the Tube. Fitting out an old shop has its benefits for ambitious operators — you start from scratch. And so here is a room that might truly make your jaw drop: the white lacquered ceiling with black detailing — design mimicked on the menus — terrazzo floor from Venice, wood walls so beautifully burled it looks like flames are dancing under the varnish. Lights are low and so is the bar: the stools are at a level where no one needs haul themselves up in that ungainly dance. I know how to fall off stools — I practise after brandy — but in other places I’ve seen people fall onto them, too. Not here.
All that beauty is made of hard-surfaced stuff, and the room is a racket, but I have heard there are plans for men clutching fabric swatches to sort the acoustics. When they do, you will be able to sit and chatter about the perfect simplicity of the food. American-Italian cooking is rarely nimble: in lieu of acrobatics is gladdening familiarity. Here it is executed wonderfully: meatballs with ragu so rich it was more like the stew of a beef bourguignon; tortellini in an almost gelatinous chicken broth, the kind once marketed as a health tonic. Veal Milanese had enough heft to play tennis with and yet despite its size was still slick with its moisture, not Saharan as they sometimes are. Gamberi crudo made a show of being delicate, the prawns pink, springy, beautiful. Order twice. Chicken diavola came with potatoes most pub Sunday roasts could only dream of; turn the spicy rub into a sauce and all the dish demands is a long lunch. Six Manhattans, pronto.
Of which, cocktails are a strength. And of strength: we behaved well on the first trip, naughtily on the second. It worked both ways; it might work in any circumstance. You could come dressed as Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn or Justin and Hailey Bieber. In the end I sat with champagne and thought: oh, I’ve found my new favourite restaurant. I feel guilty cheating on The Ritz. Still. What makes a perfect restaurant? I can’t explain, but Martino’s might show you.
37 Sloane Square, SW1W 8AN. Meal for two about £160; martinoslondon.com
