Good Vibrations

I’m a bit stuck, really, trying to describe Trattoria Vibrato. I mean, it would be useful if they’d coined the name as some sort of misplaced gag about Soho being the commercial epicentre for the purchase of sex toys, but I honestly don’t think they did. The place is too pure-hearted.

The setup is intriguing. It’s a very Italian restaurant, in the sense that it has absolutely none of the cues of a standard London Italian. Not a hint of chequered tablecloth, fiasci or dodgy murals. It has no signifiers of peasantry; it’s not disarmingly bucolic. No … instead it’s like a proper, real restaurant in a smart Italian town … the sort of place you can imagine the Italian equivalent of yourself going. Granted, because it’s Italian, it’s a holy terror for traditional dishes, ferocious regionality and superb ingredients. But’s Italian like Scarpa or Ponti. Austere and effortlessly elegant. Understated but impossibly stylish. Unassuming leggiadria.

This isn’t helping, is it? It’s somehow the most Italian restaurant I’ve encountered in London … and the least.

There’s very little branding on the front, just one, small illuminated sign high up. You’ll probably miss it, particularly if you’re haring round the corner from 3-Sheets on the outside of a pre-prandial livener (which, of course, you should be). The interior is dark, warm, welcoming. Nothing irritating obtrudes. So you notice the small touches: a mid-century Scandinavian telephone on the desk, you know … for actually talking to customers. Candles. Not sodding tea lights or miserable electric things that look like they were bought from Temu when you were expecting them to be a couple of metres high and made of chrome steel. God, it feels like a thousand years since I saw a proper restaurant candle. It’s certainly a millennium since anyone cared. I’m suddenly aware that my shirt is 3mm short for the jacket. I’m not sure about the roll on my lapel. I need a manicure, and I have the overpowering urge to wear my watch over my shirt cuff.

There’s good bread. Dense artisanal sourdough with decent butter and some sort of crisp baked flatbread that the jolly waiter tells us is called ‘Mother-in-Law’s Tongue, because it’s crisp, sharp, dry and brittle’. That’s more like it … I bet they’ll get the meter-long pepper grinder out later. I’m somehow not surprised they’ve swerved the Rat Pack soundtrack. Instead, there’s a turntable in the corner and some very manageable Miles Davis playing. These guys really didn’t get the memo, did they?

Insalata di carciofi, scaglie - shredded raw baby artichokes - is a really ballsy thing to stick on a menu. There’s absolutely nowhere to hide in texture or flavour. Here it’s been dressed just enough to lose some of its attitude and then tossed with just enough flakes of a very suave Pecorino. Not enough so the cheesiness deflects you from the artichokes. Just enough so that you appreciate them. They specify an oil for each dish so ‘Le Coste’ was all about ‘intentionality’.

Battuta de coltello - a veal tartare was, quite brilliantly, exactly the same dish. Main ingredient cut to manage texture. Thoughtfully dressed and just enough of a finely shaved cheese to balance, and Jesus … yes! They actually do have a Porfirio - a metre-high comedy pepper grinder - hidden round the back. I almost want to cheer. Until I realise that there were two, black and white pepper, as appropriate to each plate.

There’s a plate of langos about the size of a dustbin lid. A tangle of antennae and carapace that looks like some hellish xenomorph massacre. ‘Trulli Ulivi’ oil and lemon juice have been applied in abundance, but it’s the cuisson that’s stunning. Hot, a little coloured by searing but basically so raw that I picked one up by the claw and checked for a pulse. It’s not just that they bothered to have these bastards personally escorted in mere hours, from their Scottish loch to an untimely end in the kitchen; it was the absolute assurance with which they were prepared. Utter simplicity. Nowhere to hide.

Alla Gricia is one of Rome’s ‘Four pasta dishes’, classically made from guanciale, pecorino, pasta and black pepper. The pork fat emulsifies and combines with the cheese to make a creamy sauce. (Take out the meat and you’d have a cacio e pepe. Add an egg to it and you have carbonara. Swap in tomato and maybe onions for the egg and you have Amatriciana. That’s the full set). So at Vibrato they’ve pulled the guanciale from an Alla Gricia and subbed in a shredded artichoke - possibly because England is bothered by vegetarians. One could debate whether it’s actually Cacio e pepe… e carciofi … well for really quite some time. At least you could if you weren’t shovelling it past your tonsils like a starving charcoal burner. Once again, the flavours are subtle, simple and well-judged. I am reminded once again of the motto of Rutland, displayed on a board on the A1 as you pass through the county in 8 seconds: ‘Multum in Parvo’. Truly, much in little.

To crown the evening, a Gordian knot of fresh tagliatelle with farmyard ragu. Yep. Ragù bianco di cortile, which does indeed sound a little more pleasant. It’s made without tomatoes, hence ‘bianco’ and with the finely ground meat and giblets of whatever animals one might find in the ‘cortile’. Usually rabbits, the odd hen, a duck or so, and the cat. Well, maybe not the cat. In fact, quite a lot of this particular version was made with ‘Legghorn’ a mince blended from the thigh meat of 420-day-old breeder chickens with their hearts, livers and gizzards. It’s punchy, and you’re going to need to be an offal enthusiast of Bloomean scale, or some other species of gut-nutter to truly appreciate this stuff but, if, as I am, you are, you will leave positively vibrating with joy. There was a very fresh salad of lightly dressed Castelfranco, which was subtle, pure and cleansing, but by this point I’d gone fully visceral. I had about as much restraint as a hyena with its head in an antelope.

I swerved dessert because, it should be mentioned, at the back of the dining room, there’s an extremely pleasant bar, part staffed by the irrepressible Jack, who used to man the stick at Brutto. His martinis remain unimpeachable, so it’s the ideal spot to let the evening unravel. As if this didn’t bode well enough, you can sit there to eat too.

Which is good news, because quite aside from the elegance of the room and the charm of the staff, the food is some of the best I’ve eaten, well… outside of Italy. And as everything else on the menu looked stupendous, sitting here and eating is precisely what I propose doing.