Stecca on the menu

Sure enough, not long into our meal, this Luciano-lookalike, dressed in an immaculately white tunic, started disporting himself around his restaurant in the most lively fashion, chatting everybody up, taking the dishes from the waiters to deliver personally and generally giving one of the broadest renditions of the chef-patron I have ever seen. Later, he confided to my friend how much he appreciated the pretty ladies in his restaurant.

All well and good, if somebody else takes care of the kitchen. But the cooking here was hit and miss. Stecca, once at Brunello at the Baglioni hotel, tends to pretension in his menus, too, the opposite of what works best in Italian food.

From the antipasti, panfried scallops were sweet and fresh, but a creamy sauce of mushrooms added little but moisture. These came on a huge white square plate. On a giant jet-black round one, tuna was served in three versions — tartare, seared and sashimi, a Japanese-style dish that would have been better with soy and fierce wasabi, rather than a dark swirl of sweetish, probably balsamic-based sauce.

The best of the trio was the least oriental, the mound of tartare nicely flavoured with a little oil and herbs.

From the primi piatti, linguini with a lobster and parsley sauce was nice enough, with tomato and pepper dominant, the pasta challengingly al dente. But crab ravioli "con crema di pepperoni rossi e gialli" was unfinishable, the pasta envelopes completely undercooked and in any case flat, containing very little identifiable crab, while still being served with stylish patterns of red and yellow purée.

Pan-fried calf ’s liver was cooked more than had been requested — Stecca dramatically offered to re-do the dish — and the strong, sweet balsamic sauce swamped the spinach on the side, so that there was in effect only one taste on the plate.

But fritto misto di pesce was simple and good (Stecca comes from Rimini on the Adriatic coast) — plenty of squid, a couple of scallops, some red mullet fillets, a single huge prawn, lightly battered, fried just right and served on a sheet of brown paper.

And a very rich, alcoholic and creamy tiramisu couldn’t be faulted ("in small quantities, a fine dessert; otherwise, a gross, overrated indulgence," carps The Oxford Companion to Italian Food).

The decor is strenuously black-and-white but the smooth and starchy linen is splendid and the room itself, featuring a conservatory-style terrace, pleasant.

Although the restaurant, formerly Rosmarino, has been open a week, there was no wine list ready yet — though the house wines — Valpolicella, and a delicate Verdicchio — were quoted at a steep £22.

The food itself is moderately priced at the moment — three courses, £21, no supplements either — and the bill proved to be non-specific and low, a couple of proseccos and a grappa generously thrown in. The waiters were delightful, as Italian as may be. And Signor Stecca is, to say the very least, quite a turn — though perhaps that snowy tunic needs to see a little less of the diners, a little more of the kitchen.

Osteria Stecca
1 Blenheim Terrace, St John’s Wood, NW8 0EH