Babbo is daddy of a price for an Italian

There is no connection between the two Babbos. Forensic detective work (emailing the PR) reveals that Babbo London’s owner, Tatiana Joorabchian, is a lawyer who had always wanted to run her own business and was galvanised by meeting chef Douglas Santi when he was operating his own restaurant in São Paulo, the city of her birth.

Before setting up in Brazil, Tuscan-born Santi, who started his cooking career at the age of 13, was apprenticed to Laurent Saudeau when he was the right-hand man of Paul Bocuse, and from 1999 worked in a variety of restaurants owned by Alain Ducasse.

Naturally, given his training with these highfalutin French chefs who favour presentation in clumps, blobs, cones, strips, scribbles and the like — see the website of Saudeau’s two-star Michelin Manoir de la Boulaie near Nantes — the Babbo menu introduction babbles on about Italian family, warmth, tradition, homemade, authentic, regional, secret recipes and Santi’s sainted granny. The signature dish of Babbo, lasagne al ragout di chianina (the Tuscan white breed of cattle), is prepared according to Gran’s carefully guarded recipe. Still, at any age you can see the light.

The restaurant itself (previously Giardinetto) with its parade of chandeliers, bare brick wall, rustic wooden staircase and cluster of framed family photographs has an old-fashioned charm and a look you might easily find in Milan or Bologna.

Formally dressed staff — waiters with high-collars, bulbous ties and waistcoats — are in abundance.

At the first visit, where I was keen to take advantage of the set-price lunch deal (£22/£26 for two/three courses), we were presented with a little giftie of arancini, that Sicilian speciality of risotto balls —here stuffed with Fontina cheese — dusted in breadcrumbs and fried. They were well made, not at all stodgy, a definite risk factor.

Three first courses, four mains and three desserts are offered for the set lunch. Both beef carpaccio with artichokes and green salad and another little heap of salad mixed with a couple of slices of sautéed aubergine were doll’s house fare, barely more than a couple of mouthfuls.

When you add to this a main course of salmon and leek risotto made with the wrong sort of rice and resembling damp, spineless kedgeree, it makes the £22 plus 12.5 per cent service seem paltry value — especially compared with the £16.75 three-course lunch at Wild Honey not far away.

My companions, who ate à la carte, both chose the famed lasagne at starter size (£10.25). It arrived well sealed to the dish looking as if it had been cooking for a significant part of the 100 years that the recipe has evidently been in circulation, but they said the flavour was good. A lunch where in no way had we pushed the boat out — no side dishes, no desserts and two set menus as part of the order — nevertheless came to over £170 for four.

The wine list was no help as there was little or nothing of interest under £40 a bottle and the chosen Gavi Vigneto at £45 underwhelmed.

Returning to Babbo to try dinner, I said to my husband and sister "FHB" (family hold back), as I didn’t want to run up another big bill. Reg’s response was to look long and hard at the menu and choose lobster with spaghetti. At £21 it was undeniably not one of the most expensive main courses. That would be king prawns and crab grilled with pesto at £29.25. He started with the cheapest first course, notably elegant minestrone served in discreet restaurant-like quantity for £9.50. In another first course a particularly fine specimen of burrata (cream-filled mozzarella) made Babbo’s version of Caprese salad with tomato concassée and basil oil a delight — as it should have been at £12.75.

I know that comparisons are invidious but sometimes they seem invited. Mario Batali’s lobster and spaghetti dish at his Babbo is "Spaghettini with spicy budding chives and a 1lb lobster" for $26 (about £15.85). How much more enticingly that reads than the reality in Albemarle Street — a mound of spaghetti swamped in tomato sauce with some token pieces of lobster.

My sister’s choice of grilled cotecchino sausages and "rosticiana" pork ribs with potato (she requested the substitution of spinach) appeared as thin tasteless sausages, not the chunky, fatty, rich, glistening monster from Modena that was anticipated, ribs from which it was impossible to detach the meagre strings of flesh, and dark, gloomy spinach. I reckon the food costs to be about £2.50, said restaurateur Beth. The dish was priced at £23.25. A green salad, over-salted in its dressing, added another £3.

With a single dessert, an indifferently made lemon meringue tartlet, and just two glasses of wine — one replenished when a waiter poured water into the Madregale Bianco — our bill was kept in check but the effort of doing so was not much fun. Other customers appeared oblivious. As at Dolada opposite there seems to be in Mayfair a steady supply of takers for, how shall we say, insouciantly priced Italian food. Maybe to avoid possible future confusion, London Babbo could be renamed Papi.

Babbo Restaurant
Albemarle Street, London, W1S 4JQ