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Vintage Italian: The latest outpost of Spaghetti House is at Woodstock Street
A meal at a Spaghetti House probably figures in the history of most of us. Founded in 1955, the family-run company has been feeding for more than 50 years the affection that restaurant-goers have always shown towards Italian food.
In 1975 the Spaghetti House in Knightsbridge attracted unwelcome attention when an armed gang broke in on the staff collecting the week's takings of £13,000 (rather a lot for those days) and forced them into a basement storeroom.
The Spaghetti House Siege, as it came to be known, lasted five days and displayed all the hallmarks of a proper siege including the robbers claiming political affiliation with the Black Panthers and one of the hostages contracting Stockholm Syndrome, befriending the ringleader and declining to testify against him.
It ended with none of the innocent hurt and remains in my mind a more exciting fact about the Spaghetti House group than its decision in the latest branch to include shitake mushrooms in the bruschetta ai funghi.
Just in time for the new year, the 10th Spaghetti House opened on a site off the Oxford Street end of Bond Street. Since all signs point to 2008 being a belt-tightening year, it seemed an appropriate moment to visit the newest home of gamberetti con avocado, fettuccine all' Alfredo and scaloppini alla Milanese. Bills of £50 a head are all too easy to find. Here is a group offering a restaurant experience - not a meal in a chain or a gastropub - at what they say will be about £50 for two.
The Woodstock Street site is quite small and decorated in a surprisingly subtle shade of grey on which black and white photographs of Italian scenes stand out.
The back wall is decorated with images of the winking, pouting "theme and variations" Fornasetti plates. The welcome was warm and the staff all seemed to be Italian, which is a point that, these days, is worth making.
This is not a great time of year for tomatoes and that fact was apparent in bruschetta al pomodoro which we tried to order as something to dally with while making decisions about what to eat afterwards but which arrived with the first courses. There is little point in updating frozen prawns in a "brandy and calypso-pink" sauce poured into an avocado half.
It is what it is and, as such, was appreciated by he who knowingly ordered it. There is most definitely justification for getting hold of fresh buffalo mozzarella, skinning the tomatoes and finding a ripe avocado and fragrant basil for a tricolore salad. This had been done and when the giant peppermill loomed into view it seemed an anachronism in the salad's company.
Our main course choice of trenette alla scoglio, translated as Tuscan seafood pasta, appears under the heading House Favourites. Our charming waiter confirmed that it was a good choice and so we felt mildly betrayed when it proved to be a rather drab assembly.
It is not unusual in spaghetti restaurants for pasta to be pre-cooked and then plunged into boiling water when an order comes through. This may well have been the system with the trenette (narrow, flat, similar to linguini) but the disappointment in the dish was more connected with 2 January probably being one of the worst dates in the year to round up the clams, mussels, prawns and squid that traditionally constitute the garnish.
Branzino con lenticchie (sea bass fillets on lentils) proved to be the wrong sort of dish to order in a Spaghetti House. There are horses for courses and it is foolish to try to eat self-consciously "healthily" - and I suspect few do. Better to accept that a big bowl of spaghetti is more fitting and also cheaper.
At the original Spaghetti House in Goodge Street, decorated in a rustic style that would seem to have changed little since 1955, we ordered in what might be considered a traditional manner. Antipasto misto featured prime salume and also rather good marinated artichokes, sun-dried tomatoes and sheets of the flat bread called pane Carasau, which becomes pliable with the oil from the vegetables.
Spaghetti carbonara had the appeal of bacon and eggs on pasta and spaghetti alla puttanesca was as gutsy as it should be given its supposed provenance as a dish that whores could quickly assemble from what was available in the larder. Both were served with exemplary generosity.
Signs that the chefs are not numbed by a formula were the presence of dishes of the day and the willingness of one of them to make to order a perfect zabaglione. We could hear the frantic beat of the whisk in a copper bowl and then eggs, sugar and Marsala were foaming in a glass sundae dish. Activity like this distinguishes a group from a chain and inculcates fondness and loyalty in the clientele.
A friend of mine who has been going to the Goodge Street Spaghetti House for years makes the point that it is somewhere reliable that you can afford to take the family or a group of friends when you are the one paying and not feel too fierce a pinch on your wallet. In all the talk of Michelin stars and sousvide technology, such a detail too often gets ignored.
Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.
