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London,
Evening Standard rating
Reader rating
Description: "Much-loved in Primrose Hill", this "cramped" yearling is -- on most reports -- the "perfect local Italian"; it has a "pretty" garden too.
Food: 
Service:
Ambience:
Phone: 020 7483 0192
Good for: Good food, Ambience.
Payment options:
La Collina's chef Roberto Bullio with restaurant manager Cristina Nobile.
The owners of the property at 17 Princess Road in the heart of Primrose Hill have seen regional Italian restaurants come and go. Vegia Zena, which opened about 10 years ago, offered Genovese cooking.
That was followed last year by the short-lived La Superba, which also looked to Genoa (pesto a speciality) for culinary inspiration. Now the restaurant at the same address is La Collina; the chef, Roberto Bullio, hails from Piedmont.
A friend of mine connected to the production of London Fashion Week told me that the food at La Collina was getting rave reviews from his staff. I went along expecting to find a gaggle of models and the inevitable Sadie Frost but the closest we got was the charming waitress who told us that she is the girlfriend of the chef.
She gave four of us the one large table on the ground floor - surrounded by rather cramped tables for two. There is more seating downstairs and also a garden to bear in mind for when warmer weather shows up.
There are clues on Bullio's ambitious, good-value menu - £12.50/ £17.50/£22.50 for one, two or three courses - about his Piedmontese provenance. Caponet in the first course is Savoy cabbage leaves - zucchini flowers are also used - rolled around sausage meat served here in a roasted red pepper sauce with slices of sautéed apples. It was very good. Carpaccio of octopus with artichokes and walnut was also eagerly eaten. The slices of octopus were as thin as fish scales and the nutty flavour seemed to derive from oil in the dressing.
The remaining two in our quartet, the two husbands, going against the rules of my game, both chose the same thing: gnocchetti made with black potatoes served with clams, langoustines and fresh tomato sauce. This was dispatched so quickly there was none to taste, so I have to assume it was a success. I would also like to have tried pappardelle made with chestnut flour served with a venison ragu.
We all of us liked our main courses very much indeed. Genevieve the non-meat eater swooned (well, nearly) at the sight of a whole seabream and gladly accepted the offer to have it taken off the bone. The chef 's way of braising fennel with endive converted her to fennel, which she said she previously hadn't liked. Richard praised his pan-fried cod served on a heap of slatey lentils with wilted trevisano (elongated radicchio).
I thought frattaglie means giblets but what Reg got, and what Reg liked, was pan-fried calf 's liver, kidney and sweetbread in a red-wine sauce. And I, choosing last, as is my humble way, much enjoyed roasted quail chopped into manageable pieces with sausages and wild mushrooms. I think there was a dish of spinach too, introducing a note of greenery.
Bonet is a Piedmont pudding cooked in a bain-marie. The one we shared contained chocolate and Amaretti biscuits and was decidedly damp, which I thought probably correct, but from which the others recoiled like Captain Hook from the fruit cake. Tiramisu was notably light.
The wine list is as reasonably priced as the menu and we liked our choice of a Montefalco rosso at £23 quite as much as the Tuscan I Sistri Chardonnay at £29. Those folks who live on the hill have now got a jolly good Italian restaurant.
Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.
We went to La Collina on Saturday and were very disappointed, particularly given the positive review above.
We were put on a very cramped table between 2 other couples despite there being no-one else in the restaurant and at least 6 other free tables. After complaining several times we were allowed to move. Over the course of our evening 2 other couples were put on this table and complained about it
The food was not good value. We paid £75 (including a 12.5% service charge added to the bill) for 2 starters, 2 mains, one pudding and 2 glasses of house wine. The food was passable - both main courses tasted far more of oil and rosemary than calves liver, or sliced beef with mushrooms.
La Collina will need to work much harder given how many other far superior restaurants there are within a 100m radius
- Frances, Primrose Hill
