Review at a glance: ★★★☆☆
The prefix “extra” means beyond, or outside. As in extracurricular (beyond the curriculum), extra-terrestrial (outside the earth) or extravaganza (beyond the, er, vaganza). By definition, life cannot be extraordinary: most of it must be usual, normal. Humdrum. Restaurants fit this: the majority are serviceable, decent, places that pass the time but do not blow the mind. London is full of them. And full of good, hard-working chefs, but not extraordinary ones.
Luke Ahearne is not one of the good, hard-working clan. The ex-Lita chef is a maniacally obsessive sort, dedicated as hell, creatively curious. Extraordinary in both the sense of beyond and outside. Lita, a beautiful place for people with beautiful incomes, was very much about him. “I’ve trained the kitchen to have my palate,” he once told me there. “So if I’m off, nothing changes.”
Many run their kitchens relying on the senses of others. What you suspect Ahearne really wants is for human cloning to hurry up and be approved so he can staff a brigade using replicas of himself. This is not a criticism: he’s one of the finest of fine-dining chefs working in London, up there with Spencer Metzger and Chet Sharma.
Now he is at Motorino. Curious name, that, for an Ahearne project. Small motor it means, or moped as the Italians have it. Ahearne has energy like someone bolted a turbo to his heart and pours liquid nitrous oxide into his coffee. No matter. It is the second 2025 opening from chef Stevie Parle and Jonathan Downey, following Town, a lava lamp beauty of 1960s colours and curves.
This room offers more of the same; only the space is different. It is identikit, or almost: someone mentioned the kitchen frontage is a slightly different shade. Maybe? Other similarities include the gags on the wine list (“Second-cheapest white”; “The only rosé you’ll ever need”), repeated dishes (pickles and ferments, ragu with pappardelle) and all the branding. Motorino? It’s Town 2.0, just a moped ride away.
It’s certainly no Lita 2.0. Lita was Spanish, Italian and Irish, and this, the website says, is the team’s “vision of a modern London-Italian restaurant”. Lita was also good, and this is not.
Or not yet. The menu reads dreamily, and Ahearne — well you know what I make of him. But something is going wrong somewhere. Is there a headcase on the pass? Everything that promised so much delivered so little. Chopped Dexter — steak tartare to the rest of us — came under a punk’s haircut of shoestring fries, spiced with fermented green chilli and porcini ketchup. The first bite was a brilliant lie, the spice soft and a little bitter, the mushroom adding its earthy umami. But then it began: the salt, which built and built into a burn that wouldn’t go out, as though I’d swallowed plastic set alight with gasoline.
After that were grilled sardines on a carpaccio of five different tomatoes, as pretty a dish as there is, discs of reds, pinks and greens with the glitter of fish skin on top. The sardines were delicious, their flavour ringing out. Well, momentarily. Who added all the vinegar? What have they got to prove? Such a heavy hand belongs in a dive bar, pouring right to the brim.
It was like I’d swallowed plastic set alight with gasoline
The best dish, agnolotti in a carbonara sauce, was a masterpiece of refinement, a dish where its simplicity was its brilliance: tiny purses of pasta arrived under Ahearne’s signature feather of lardo. But it was marred by its price: £21 for seven bites of flour and water and egg. Salt breathed its fire again with peposo (slow-cooked beef), although the accompanying quenelle of polenta was beautiful. Sea bass was cooked expertly, but its shellfish sauce was poor. Are you seeing the pattern? Everything is a series of diminishing returns, slowly worsening as they go on. When building the dishes, did anyone bother with more than a single bite?
Afterwards we met friends in the bar, wondering what they’d made of it. Not unprintable but almost. To me, these faults could be fixed with a solid weekend of recalibration. My lingering doubt is: did this feel like an Ahearne restaurant? Even if the execution was his usual standard, I worry it might never go beyond ordinary.
1 Pearson Square, W1T 3BF. Meal for two about £220; motorino.london
