68 The Times Magazine
you – or, more importantly, it asks me – to
muffle up on a wet winter’s night and skulk
into town on public transport on the OFF
CHANCE of getting something to eat.”
This would be okay in Barcelona or Seville,
I opined, where one can simply leave one’s
name at the door and mosey down the road
for a tapa somewhere else and then mosey
back a bit later, but not in London, where
there was nowhere to mosey to. It would
never catch on.
But it did. As Polpo took off, opening
branch after branch and spawning a billion
imitators, the principle of booking a table
died out altogether for a while, as did phone
numbers themselves. Restaurants simply
stopped quoting them. It was the “You
need us more than we need you” phase of
restauration. Restaurants were like coy sixth-
form beauties who wouldn’t give you their
number no matter how much you begged.
All you could do was show up and tap at the
window and hope to be let in (which was most
usefully done before 6pm or after 10pm – when
one couldn’t possibly want to eat). I hated it.
But then came economic slowdown,
pandemic, mass closure and a fairly rapid
realignment of the old power relations. A
lot of those no-bookings places that were so
dependent on a vibrant, local, going out all
hours culture closed – which was awful for
all involved and incredibly sad – and Polpo
itself went into administration.
And when Russell decided to start again,
with a daring 130-mile southwesterly leap
from Venice to Florence, he decided to let
people book. So I did. And here I am, at
Brutto, in all its dark wood and red-and-
white-checked solidity, close to Farringdon
station, on the site of the old Hix Oyster &
Chophouse (sic transit gloria mundi), swilling
a negroni (the great Ajax Kentish of Spuntino
is back on the bar!) and enjoying the warm
hubbub and somewhat grown-up vibe (thanks
to the booking system, which weeds out
young, impulsive types) very much indeed.
It is not the best table in the house, for the
name of “Armando Hardwilli” does not carry
the clout of some others. But, alas, that is the
pseudonym I used once on a new reservation
website called Resy many years ago, and
I don’t know how to change it. Worse still, I’m
never sure which website I’ve used to book
a restaurant when I arrive at it (there are so
many now) and generally go through a long
list before quietly murmuring, “You could try,
um, ‘Armando Hardwilli’.” I never say it first
up, because of the time when I arrived at the
Dorchester and said to the guy on reception,
“Do you have a ‘Hardwilli’?” and he waited
quite a long time before replying, “No, Mr
Coren, but it’s always a pleasure to see you.”
We were right by a little service bar and
bread cutting station, one of those loose
tables that float aimlessly in the middle of
the floor, with a load-bearing column in the
way of the waiters, and Russell was mortified,
bless him. But chaps like me and my mate
Kenton don’t come for people-watching or
sightlines; we come for a bottle of Fontodi,
and then another one, and some proper food
and a bit of noise and chatty staff and the
sense that the weekend starts here, even if
it’s a Tuesday.
The place is called Brutto for some smart
reason about which I care no more than
I cared why last week’s place was called
Planque. Doesn’t matter. McDonald’s is called
McDonald’s because it serves McDonald’s.
Scott’s is called Scott’s because it servesoysters and a nice Dover sole. And Sexy Fish
is called Sexy Fish because Richard Caring
is mental.
I’m not even that bothered about it being
Florentine. I went to Florence once. Sure, the
Duomo is nice – clap, clap – but I didn’t eat
well, and the streets were terribly crowded.
Same with Venice, Rome... I know everyone
loves Italy, but I’ve never got on with it.
I’ll eat the cooking, of course, but I’m far
happier doing it in Farringdon, ten minutes
from Kentish Town on the Thameslink.
The black and white A4 menu looks
handtyped on account of the old-school font
they’ve got going, and it has Italian on one
side, English on the other. I nearly had the
“Coccoli, prosciutto e stracchino” until I saw
that in English they were called “Dough ball
cuddles” and refused on principle. It sounded
a bit Robin Thicke. A bit #MeToo, if they have
that in Italy. Which I doubt.
Crostini fegatini (£8.50) involved lots
of dense chicken liver piled onto toast. Not
your frothy French stuff, just a lot of well-
seasoned offal – as much like Jewish chopped
liver as anything else – which is a big thing
in Florence, I recall. Really good with the
Fontodi, and presented with a serious, sheep-
killing knife to halve the third crostino and
avoid arguments.
In the same, simple – I was going to say
“rustic”, but Florence is a city – vein wasIt’s a sexy name,
‘penne con vodka’, but
it’s a fugazi, as Donnie
Brasco would say
“Acciughe, burro, pane” (£8.75), in which
“acciughe” means anchovies, and “burro”
means butter (even I knew that) and “pane”
means St John sourdough (which is an awful
lot to cram into four letters). The bread was
charred on a griddle and there were seven or
eight anchovies – oily, tinned, very salty, so
thick you could cut steaks from them – with
eight proper little 1970s hotel curls of butter
rolling about on them. Fat overkill? Not a
bit of it. The thing with anchovies is they
are so strong that they are usually used to
lend their umami to other dishes (pizza, roast
lamb, a puttanesca sauce), so alone they need
lengthening. The butter does that. You mash
the salted fish down into the creamy butter,
spread it on and... Well, you know how to eat
bread. But, anyway, awesome.
For the sake of our intestinal regularity
there came raw veg crudites: carrot, fennel,
white and red carrots, with new season olive
oil and lemon (£7). This is how Florentines
taste the new oil harvest each year, you see,
not with bread but with raw vegetables, which
bring out the flavour. Or so Russell claimed.
He may have been shitting me just to see if
I put it in print.
I loved the pork tonnato (£12.50) for the
sweet fat and dainty rind on the meat that
you don’t get with veal, the restrained drizzle
of tuna sauce, the sliced caperberries and the
big flay leaves of parsley. Kenton’s pappardelle
con coniglio (an even cuter word for rabbit
than “rabbit”) was wonderful: ostensibly
sweet and blandish but with such depth and
subtle seasoning that it evolved lusciously
in the chew (£14). And my penne con vodka
(£10.25) was a very good dish too – pasta
in a rich sauce of cream and tomato – as long
as one acknowledges that penne con vodka
is a barefaced 1980s Italian-American sham
of a dish in which the vodka does nothing.
It’s a sexy name, “penne con vodka”, but it’s
a fugazi, as Donnie Brasco would say. A
fockin’ fugazi.
We had the smallest steak on the
blackboard (it’s a Florentine homage joint,
after all), 550g for £50, which was chargrilled
beautifully, well rested, yadda yadda, sliced
in the tagliata style, with white cabbage (£4)
shredded seductively fine and sharply dressed,
and then a brilliant tiramisu (£7.50). Then
booked again for the following week because,
as I may have mentioned, you can. nTrattoria Brutto
35-37 Greenhill Rents, London EC1
(020 4537 0928; msha.ke/brutto)
Cooking 8
Vibes 9
Bookability 10
Score 9Eating out Giles Coren