It's a lazy shorthand we know, but there's something to be said for eating in a restaurant where a majority of the customers hail from the same part of the world that the cuisine originates from. It does make you feel that the kitchen must be doing something right. So, when invited to try out the Santino Busciglio's Mennula in Charlotte Street, Hot Dinners was comforted to see a reliably large number of Italians met at the doors with a series of kisses, back-slapping and bear hugs.
Mennula's a tiny restaurant with a big heart and its chef enjoys prowling through the dining room, checking that all is well. Thankfully, for him, the smiles of his well-fed customers were testament to that.
We began the meal by trying a new addition to the menu which Santino had told us about at La Dolce Vita the previous week - deep-fried, parmesan-crusted duck egg served on ribbons of raw Italian asparagus. It's the perfect dish, one that's probably artery-furringly bad for you, but because of the presence of all that delicious asparagus, makes you feel decidedly healthy for ordering. We also tried the vitello tonnato - tiny rolls of the softest veal wrapped round tuna with olive oil mayonnaise. A classic dish, but one we'd never tried before - it's an inspired pairing of flavours and textures.
For our main courses, we could have plumped for the Lobster linguine that had Gordon Ramsay all in a tizz when Mennula featured on his Britain's Best Restaurant's programme, but we thought we'd see what else Santino's kitchen had to offer and so tried the strozzapreti with lamb ragout as well as the honey roasted middle white pork with white polenta, savoy cabbage and truffle honey. Both were liberally covered with shavings of white truffle. The strozzapreti (twists of hand rolled pasta colourfully known as the priest choker in Italy) was the standout success - perfectly cooked pasta with melting lamb bursting with flavour. The pork was good, but while the white polenta served it well as an accompaniment, the cabbage was pretty tasteless.
We had to have a go at the side order of Monks Beard which when we knew it only has a season of five weeks we had to try. It didn't quite win us over, however, with both of us thinking it was distinctly an acquired taste.
For desserts, we took our groaning bellies into account and split the difference, sharing first a cheese platter accompanied with crispbreads and more of the truffled honey. This was one of those inspirational marriages of flavour, the perfect pairing to the two types of pecorino - one just three months old, the other more mature. And then we had what could so easily have been the wafer thin mint moment - the warm Sicilian doughnuts with truffled honey and yet more white truffles. Know only this - it's worth eating salad for a week to try these.
So, Mennula - an oddball mixture of a Charlotte Street Italian which manages to be both trattoria-friendly and high-end restaurant in its offering to please all comers. It opened on the site where Gennaro Contaldo's people-pleasing Passione used to stand. We think Mennula should have similar staying powers.
