L’Anima, Snowden Street, London

A good friend recommended me the L’Anima in London and being susceptible to good advice I booked a table for one. I think it’s fair to call out the place as sleek, modern and sophisticated. The crowd it attracted also fell into that category, the density of city boys was rather high and so was the noise level. Still wearing my tie form the lunch at the Ritz, I was out of place, since I wasn’t showing any man cleavage, something which seems all the rage with nouveau riche boys. The menu was actually quite hard to read, not because of the excellent explanations of the different Italian and Calabrian components on the side, but simply that the type-face was on the verge of unreadable. It reminded somewhat of an old matrix printer. I started with some hand-carved tuscan ham, with liver crostini and sott’aceti. Pretty decent ham, maybe too much for an appetizer and the crostini with liver was a good idea. I would have enjoyed the bread to be even crunchier, but I’ll chalk that down to personal taste.

The next dish were some home-made malloreddus with clams, colatura, light tomato & bottarga. I was slightly disappointed since the balance of the dish was slightly off. Saffron is a delicate and lovely spice but when combined with Chilli (and there was a bit of bite to the dish) extra care needs to be taken to get the balance right. Striking just a little to high here on the spicy side, robbed the dish the sumptious taste saffron normally excites. The Fettuccine with wild boar were the way I liked them, simple in composition yet flavourful. The main course was a slowly cooked black pig belly with N’Cantarra sauce. This almost had a chinese like quality to it, combining fat & tasty meat with a sweet sauce consisting of honey, paprika and spices. On the heavy side but a nice italian dish. I was told that the restaurant had a Michelin star, which turned out to be wrong and in all honesty I think it wouldn’t have been deserved. The place is too flashy, the food not balanced enough and overall it felt like a very heady approach to soul (anima) instead of one coming from the heart. Prices: