Gloria is completely at odds with London’s restaurant scene right now. It is lots and lots of hopelessly optimistic, wanton fun. Along a kerb in Shoreditch of a Friday night, around 100 folk were attempting to gain entry to this new Italian trattoria in order to taste “Filippo’s big balls”.
I generally balk at restaurant queues, because they tend to attract all the usual joyless, food-scene suspects: trust-fund types harvesting content for their Vogon poetry blogs, and those foodie couples who are a bit like swingers, in that one of them is much less into it all and would rather be down Turtle Bay. But this was quite a sexy queue, full of messy-haired, pouting, snake-hipped European sorts, all flocking towards the pizzas, pastas, cicchetti and dolci, as well as the well-stocked bar that serves until 2am.
On the evening in question, the feasibly unhinged Parisians who have opened this multi-floored 160-seater had scrawled BREXITALIA messily on a vast banner and attached it to the building’s front. This meant that, at first glimpse, Gloria resembled somewhere you might drink snakebite after a riot, but on closer inspection revealed a purposefully naff, twinkly, 1970s Capri glam with frilly cream awnings, pink velour seating and overcrowded bar surfaces covered in pretty tat and obscure vermouths. A private wine room stocks more than 3,000 bottles of Italian wines, including a nerdy selection of barolos, but you can pick up a bottle of trebbiano or sangiovese for £23.
Gloria is styled with the intensity of a Scorsese movie set; specifically, a scene in which the antihero takes out a woman who is out of his league to get her tipsy on Nardini grappa riserva and unhook her bra. Gloria’s serving staff are young, hyperactive, apparently-Italians-but-who-cares, mostly male and wearing billowing, pink candy-striped outfits like Victorian night-dresses. The playlist ranges, in tangential swipes, from Ghanaian highlife (King Bruce) to Chicago house (Ten City) to Northern Irish electronic (Bicep) to Girlfriend In A Coma by The Smiths. I know, I know – but I’m serious.
The menu, of a night-time, is utterly indecipherable. Ordering is sheer chance. The lighting is dim, the menu is printed on dark cream card in 10-point burgundy. Descriptions lurch between pseudo-Italian and a sort of nudgy-winky, Carry On movie English that I’m calling Sid James-ese. One minute you’re peering at the carciofo alla giudia, muttering, “OK, carciofo, that’s deep-fried artichoke … I think”, and the next you’re suddenly in among the Black Mamba cuttlefish pasta, the aforementioned Filippo’s big balls – slow-cooked meatballs with a pecorino centre – or a “YouPorn” pizza. Obviously I found the names phallocentric and problematic, and cried most of the following day. The culatello con cotenna has the straightforward menu note: “To ham what Wu-Tang Clan is to hip-hop.”
If all that sounds exhausting, the bathrooms are a fresh sort of gender neutral, in that the cubicles have doors made of one-way glass, so if you’re sitting to pee, you look directly into the eyes of people of all sexes. They are the Schrödinger’s bog of the bathroom debate.
I should probably mention the food. It’s so easy to get distracted by all of this jolly, precisely orchestrated chaos. Yer actual dinner in places like Gloria is usually where things tend to fall apart. But, confoundingly, everything we had was really good, if not downright delicious. A fresh Puglian burrata cremosa appeared on a vivid green puddle of extra-virgin olive oil, and that deep-fried carciofo came with cacio e pepe sauce for dipping. Artichoke can be a vast disappointment, a triumph of effort over return, but Gloria’s is the best being served in London right now.
We eschewed “The 10-level lasagne” in favour of pasta al tartufo, a satisfying, dank bowl of fresh mafalda ribbons littered with black Molise truffle, mascarpone and button mushrooms. The Big Mamma carpaccio is a gigantic, oval plate of fine-quality beef, plus leaves and parmesan, that could feed at least three. “Vegan (De)Light” is a portobello mushroom on a skewer with some sort of chickpea and hazelnut gloop and an aubergine mush. I sense it was added to the menu through gritted teeth.
We ate a fine “cookigasmic” praline tart for pudding and knocked back the complimentary limoncello that, like all women of my vintage, I want to believe I was given because I’m special and pretty. Gloria is kicking Brexit gloom up the arse with 120mm Miu Miu stiletto pumps. You can’t help but admire its balls.
• Gloria 54-56 Great Eastern Street, London EC2, no telephone. Open all week, 11.45am-10.45pm (1am Thurs-Sat, 10.30pm Sun). From about £30 a head, plus drinks and service.
Food 8/10
Atmosphere 9/10
Service 8/10
