SARDO Canale

(23 February 2007)
42 Gloucester Ave,
Primrose Hill,
London NW1 8JD
(www.sardocanale.com)

This is the Primrose Hill offshoot of Sardo in Fitzrovia but I greatly prefer the Canale to Centrale. This is both because I think the Canale’s décor in a converted warehouse at the Regent’s canal is cool but also I always seem to get very eccentric and experimental food there. This is at least partially because I always go with the same friend who knows the owner and the staff so we end up getting whatever the cook is experimenting with. This is particularly true now because they have a new chef who is only 23 and anxious to leave his mark on the restaurant. He is however only 23 and therefore lacking the experience that would allow him to avoid some particularly embarrassing mistakes. That being said we had three of his experiments and two where fantastic and one was a definite miss. I am however, quite willing to suffer that ratio in order to get experimental food at the highest quality.

We had:

Talleri di carne and Talleri di pesce these are wooden platters of meats and cheeses or treated fish that are quite generous but pricey at £17. They also contained one of chef’s creations a fresh artichoke heart salad that was excellent. Everything on the Talleri was of the highest quality but the cheese was particularly memorable;

Seafood Gnocci with artichoke heart sauce (chef’s creation fantastic!);

Black Inc & Squid Gnocci with orange juice (chef’s creation – good idea but needs work as the ingredients where at war with each other!);

Scaloppa di vitello all'Ovinfort – definitely a keeper. Ovinfort is a Sardinian blue cheese that’s mild and creamy and the combination of the scalloppa and the mild cheese sauce was very memorable;

We drank some very presentable Sardinian vines with all of this and I wish I could remember their names but for obvious reasons I don’t. Ended the evening by drinking too much grappa at the front of the house.