An Italian restaurant created by French people has arrived in a “new” part of central London, or at least a bit of it that now has a brand new name thanks to the recent bulldozing and reimagining of part of Soho. Ilona Rose House, anyone? The name hardly rolls off the tongue, does it, but it describes the many thousands of square feet of land more or less behind Greek Street that consists of work spaces, art installations and, more relevant to this column, a mews with alfresco dining. You enter via an archway on Greek Street, or via the equally new, spangly, hyper-modern Tottenham Court Road station, although right now you’ll still be treading through building sites, cooing at foxes cavorting in rubble and basically wondering: “Where the hell am I? None of this seems to be on the map.”
The developers have chucked just about everything they can at IIona Rose House to prettify this mega-priced patch of grade-A real estate. Milk Beach and Kapara opened here last year, and now there’s Daroco, a 120-seater Parisian import that serves fancy pizza, titivated pappardelle and hyped-up tiramisu. Yes, it may be selling mainly just pizza and pasta, but Daroco does so in a wildly ostentatious and unforgettable manner that I’m going to call acid art deco with a renaissance edge. Velour gilt banquettes perch under a mirrored, pleasure palace ceiling, and there are lots of plants, lots of brass, lots of staff in navy blue and an enormous disco pizza oven decorated with a whole flock of blue butterflies.
Minimalist is clearly a filthy word to the Daroco people. Here, more is most definitely more. Downstairs there’s a spacious, equally ornate cocktail bar called, rather bizarrely, Wacky Wombat. At Daroco, the website says, architect Oliver Delannoy “sets the stage by imagining a more than monumental identity”, an identity that has already been a great success in both the 2nd and 16th arrondissements of Paris due to the vision of owners Alexandre Giesbert, Julien Ross and Nico de Soto. The trio behind those ventures now find themselves in an area of London that’s only just awakening after a decade under dust covers.
It’s mere moments from the Outernet, a space where tourists now linger in their thousands, lured by the Vegas-style wraparound screens that blare out music all day long. I’m sure all that gawping will make them fancy a bowl of spaghetti alla chitarra with baccalà, cured sardines with sweet-sour white onions and pine kernels, or chocolate mousse served very much French-style in a lovely, aerated, gelatinous lump and garnished with big pinch of sea salt.
I can’t help but be rather enamoured of Daroco. It’s silly, yes, but it’s fun, to quote the title of my favourite episode of The Good Life. In this gig, I must eat pasta in a safely decorated, somewhat pale room at least 20 times a year, so it’s a real treat to have Daroco channel Michelangelo’s St Peter’s basilica while bringing me ravioli filled with braised pheasant served in a butter and rosemary sauce.
After all the bluster, I was expecting very little from the food, but I’ll eat that cynicism immediately: this was a more than decent lunch. First, that big, blue and ridiculous pizza oven is churning out possibly the best pizzas in Soho. These are huge, sloppy, soft-based and floofy-edged, and made with good-quality produce at more or less the same price as the nearby Pizza Express. The “parmigiana” with tomato sauce, fried aubergine, stracciatella, grana padano and basil is very good and serves two. The “mortadelight” is littered with fior di latte mozzarella and comes with mortadella, more stracciatella, a rather wondrous pistachio cream and crushed pistachios. The arancini are plump, crunchy-coated, stuffed with well-seasoned braised leeks, scamorza, hot peppers and pecorino, and pretty much as good as arancini get. An antipasti of marango beef, sliced thinly and served raw, is dressed with good-quality olive oil, sea salt, lemon and a side of pane carasau, or Sardinian “sheet music” crispbread.
Yes, this is a vast, daft restaurant in the heart of tourist land, but it’s also much better than it needs to be. I felt similarly about Milk Beach next door. Such restaurants are the only things saving this Soho facelift from being wholly awful.
As well as that mousse, we had the tiramisu for pudding, a generous, unregimented stack of espresso-soaked savoiardi biscuits and mascarpone splodged dramatically in a bowl, with no sharp corners and almost like a trifle. A new mode of presentation, perhaps, but still the same old comforting, boozy, spongey, creamy, dinner-party classic.
The staff are lovely and the menu isn’t that pricey, considering where it is. Leave your family staring at the 50m screens playing Beyoncé and treat yourself to a Napoli pizza with capers, white anchovies and taggiasca olives with a £6 glass of montepulciano. Central London is befuddling, but there is some wonky sanity at play here.
Daroco Ilona Rose House, Manette Street, London W1, 020-7348 4998. Open all week, lunch noon-3.30pm, dinner 5.30-11pm (10.30pm Sun). From about £50 a head, plus drinks and service
The ninth episode in the new series of Grace Dent’s Comfort Eating podcast goes live on Tuesday 21 November. Listen to it here. Her new book of the same name is published by Guardian Faber at £20; to order a copy for £17, visit guardianbookshop.com
