Dolada
from 5 reviews
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Dolada
Features: Cuisine: ItalianNearest Transport: 0 / 0
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Dinner at Dolada last week was the first time for months I had dinned out in Mayfair. I opted for the Hazelnut smoked beef was pretty much perfect. I like my beef medium rare and that is what I got, meat with a beautiful red -pink centre. My date opted for the Marsala-steamed lobster and French truffle, which he raved over for the rest of theevening.. I The service was sublime and the restaurnant has a wow factor. If im not paying, I will be back, very soon.... hint hint.
Our visits to new incarnations of this Mayfair basement restaurant – recently re-branded as an offshoot of an outfit in Pieve d’Alpago, established in 1923 – always seem to have an air of Groundhog Day about them. [read more]
We had meant to try Dolada for a while, as recommendations came to us from more than one quarter. Well, as often happens, high expectations led to bitter (literally: read on) disappointment. We just did not see the point of this place, formerly known as Mosaico (endearingly this name was still printed on the bill we received) and we are going to tell you why.
We begin well, the tables very comfortable, the room very inviting, warm (red wood) and pleasant, except for the people, including over-wealthy youth and boorish business apes.
A very promising amuse is brought to us by a waiter who, in the vain attempt to describe it, mutters some incomprehensible words. It is obvious he hasn’t the faintest idea what it it is, except that it definitely looks like an egg ‘a la coque’. Anyway, fittingly enough the amuse is amusing, the inside being a ‘scrambled egg white’ onion jam. It is airy, it is tasty, it is fun, it is velvety and luscious.
We like chefs who make a statement with their amuse, and Riccardo dal Pra, starred in Italy with a restaurant by the same name, definitely wants you to know what type of cuisine he stands for.
Expectations are set even higher.
And then everything comes down with a crashing flop.
Maybe we should have gone for the tasting menu, which includes the famous pizza glu-glu, the trademark drinkable pizza in which the basic components, mozzarella, basil and tomato are liquefied and separated and therefore drunk from a special bottle. Maybe we should have left Dal Pra fully express his jocular vein.
But we didn’t. And the rest of the dinner was not bad, but entirely forgettable. For example:
Tagliatelle with crab and truffle (£22)
The tagliatelle are well-made in terms of texture though rather too thick and heavy. No class. The flavours overlap rather than marry. Compared with the wonderful truffles we are used to (black and white), for example, at Latium, and the crab we can buy superfresh just 100 yards of where we live (no, not London) the performance is barely OK, rather a waste of the noble materials; and look at the price: we want to part from our hard-earned cash for the sake of taste, not the name of the ingredient.
Cuttlefish salad (£12)
The dish is pretty and looks humourous and, more importantly, like a good idea (the green sauce you see on the bottom is broccoli). But it turns out to be no more. The flavours are far from the promise of the looks. The tomato is sad, and the dish is in fact insipid. And the cuttlefish is even a little overcooked.
Fish soup (£18)
Pretty, once again, but oh how lame! With all those materials inside, how could he achieve such a lack of deep flavours, of concentration? But the worst is still to come…
After a non-stop disappointment with starter, pasta and two mains we are in no mood for dessert, although we are kindly treated to the fun ‘petit four’, which are impressive enough.
The service
There is a service issue here, in that the waiters lower down the scale from the manager and the senior one do not seem to understand what they are serving. Also, the active request of whether you want to have pepper added to your dish is more fitting of a pizzeria than of a restaurant of this level, and is perhaps telling of the clientele they expect.
The low: Pan-fried cod with Sicilian cous cous (£18)
If so far the rest of the food had been just substandard for the hype and the price, this cod is really disastrous. The texture is dry and cardboardish, the taste is bitter (the skin). And the whole dish looks maladjusted, not standing together: just the two main materials juxtaposed to each other, with traces of (burned, as you can see) vegetables and thin liquid. What kind of a dish is this in a fine dining restaurant?
The high
There was the beginning, the amuse of ‘egg a la coque’, and no more. If we were intellectuals we could quote the opening from one of T.S. Eliot’s quartets, ‘In my beginning is my end...’*
The price
Expect £150 for a three course meal for two with a lower end wine, tasting menu at £55.
Conclusion
Never judge a restaurant from a single visit, they say. Maybe we found a bad night. But we cannot forget or forgive that Chef Dal Pra was right there, not in his starred Italian venue, and he allowed those bland (and on one occasion poor) dishes to go through the pass - did he not see the burnt veggies, for example? Our impression was one of somebody much concerned about show, fun and appearance (in the tasting menu) but not focussed on delivery in terms of detail and big flavours, at least in the regular dishes. Sorry, given the bloated prices, for us this is it: we won’t be back.
The Italian wine list features some serious growers. Examples include the lovely Vintage Tunina from Jermann at a hefty £85 (retail price around £25), Antinori Tignanello 2007 at £140 for a wine that cost about £40 in the shops, up to Solaia at £470 compared to a retail price of around £75 or so. At the lower end Jermann Pinot Bianco 2007 is £43 for a wine that costs about £13 in the shops, and Collio Pinot Grigio 2007 is £50 compared to a shop price of about £10 or so. These are pretty severe mark-ups, more even than Zafferano, which no-one could accuse of a generous mark-up policy these days.
The bread is slices of white and brown, and apparently made from scratch; this had very pleasant texture (5/10). A nibble of a little roulade of lamb with a basic salad had very well flavoured lamb (from the estate of the restaurant owner) though the salad was not exciting (5/10) and rustic bean soup with a tomato base (4/10).
My starter was “new” spaghetti carbonara i.e. deconstructed into its component elements: pancetta, pasta, a slow cooked egg (half an hour at 60 degrees C) and Parmesan. This was mixed together by our waiter and was enjoyable, the pancetta particularly tasty, the pasta having good texture (5/10). This was a lot better than my wife’s complex salad of langoustines, basil and prawns, which in addition featured cauliflower, endive, almonds, orange,, tomato and some oddly limp fried onion. One piece of langoustine was soggy, another fine, but there were just too many competing flavours on the plate, prettily presented though it was (2/10). An intermediate course of asparagus mousse with steamed egg served in a cocktail glass was rather uniformly wet in texture and for me needed some other textural element (2/10).
I then had a saffron risotto, which was pleasant though not a patch on the one I had in Milan last week. The rice was fine, but serving the risotto on a flat plate meant that it quickly became cold, and the gold leaf as a garnish did nothing for me (4/10). This was better than the cod with mixed vegetables, which was cooked well but had gnocchi that were severely over-salted (something you will not often find me saying); overall around 2/10. My veal cheeks cooked in Merlot wine were enjoyable and tender, served with rather ordinary vegetables including broccoli (3/10).
For dessert my parfait of red berries had nice texture but needed deeper fruit flavour, which was frustrating given that the garnish of raspberries had excellent flavour; the spun sugar decoration was a 1980s relic that seemed to me out of place on this quite modern menu (2/10). Better was a pineapple pannacotta with good texture and served with a sliver of pineapple (4/10).
Petit fours were an impressive set of caramelised fruits on sticks and a series of more conventional nibbles, including very good shortbread biscuit (5/10 for the petit fours and the strong coffee). Service was attentive, as well it might have been given that I counted just two other tables of diners (plus staff from the restaurant’s PR agency).
Overall I found the cooking quite capable, inventive in places without being strange, and showing generally good technique if I ignore the gnocchi. Sourcing is good e.g. the fine lamb, the excellent Doladino olive oil. The elephant in the room is the price: at £95 per head plus service, with a moderate bottle of wine and no pre-dinner drinks, this is more expensive than Michelin starred Italian restaurants in London, and nice enough though it was, this is some way from Michelin star food. It is as if they did their business plan in 2007 and priced accordingly, yet have woken up in a 2009 economy and hoped no-one would notice. The practically empty dining room (admittedly on a Monday night) suggests that, even in Mayfair, there is a limit to what you can charge for this level of food. This is a shame as I think the chef can cook quite well, but I don’t think he will have a large audience for long at this price level. Even the lunch menu at £32 is very expensive even compared to numerous Michelin-starred places in central London. If they radically reassess their pricing then they may do OK, but the value for money factor is seriously out of kilter at present.
When we walked in there were a group of friends all sitting at the bar sipping on an aperitif and munching on typical Italian stuzzichini (word for nibbles) whilst in deep animated conversation. The Italian vibe of enjoying drink and food was happily filling the restaurant atmosphere.
After being escorted to our candle-lit table, we sat on a burgundy red leather settee while sipping on Bellinis and finally starting to unwind from a stressful and chaotic day. The aperitif was accompanied by a plate of carefully put together snacks such as salame with capers, bresaola with mascarpone cheese, mortadella cube with gherkins and cherry tomato with mozzarella cheese. The menu selection was primarily fish based with only a couple of main and pretty common meat dishes. The fish variety however was good from molluscs and crustaceans to the wild sea bass, halibut and John Dory.
We decided upon a primo piatto (dish) of potato gnocchi with langoustine and linguine with fresh clams followed by grilled deep fried calamari, prawns and endive and langoustine with light mustard sauce and a side dish of mixed vegetables. The potato gnocchi was absolutely superb, the roughness of the gnocchi capturing the lightly creamy sauce made of cherry tomatoes, parsley and langoustines. However, the linguine with fresh clams seemed a bit bland and on the oily side, maybe it would have favoured from a twist of chilli to spice it up a little. The waiter advised us on a semi-dry bottle of white wine that was just ideally matched to bring up the delicate shellfish flavours on our pallet.
The mains that followed were both mouth watering and of very generous portions. The meaty grilled langoustine was so fresh, so sweet and so perfectly cooked and the deep fried calamari, prawns, baby octopus and endive was lightly buttered and crispy just like the exquisite Italian way.
Looking at the desserts on the menu we were wondering if we could fit them in after all so we opted for a shared portion of the Mosaicos temptations. The dish was just too appealing to miss after listening to our waiter who pitched them like a patisserie master chef. The dessert was served with four portions of very rich and exquisite delicacies. In front of us there were the mouth temptations of a chocolate chilly mousse with blackberry, a shot glass filled with a light cheese cream covered with raspberry coulis, a banana ice cream scoop and a warm mini chocolate souffle.
The dish was the perfect ending to an exquisite meal. The relaxed atmosphere of Mosaico, the freshness of the food and the super attentive but not imposing service made our evening definitely one to remember.
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