Antico

This week was the second time that I have been to Antico and I will definitely be returning for a 3rd. It was Thursday evening and on arrival the restaurant was buzzing. We were greeted by a happy and helpful waitress and shown directly to our table. The wine list is thoughtfully put together and there are some very interesting Italian choices on it. The menu is Italian giving you the option of small plates of a traditional meal with a pasta course if you are really hungry. We had the prawn and squid fritti to share to begin with, which was delicious. The batter was light and it the chilli and basil aioli was an excellent and unique accompaniment. The highlight was definitely the Forerib of Beef Fiorentina – cooked to perfection, mouthwateringly tasty and an extremely generous portion. We are not fans of formal, quiet, lifeless restaurants and this is everything but. Can’t wait to go back.

Myself and a group of 3 others went to Antico for the first time last week. As one of the most recent addition to Bermondsey street, Antico has big shoes to fill. And fill them it does!

Antico provides a welcome venue for casual but top notch dining (as well as a downstairs lounge bar for after dinner drinks!!)

We booked ahead of time for dinner on a Thursday and lucky we did because the restaurant was bustling when we arrived. Despite this we were attended to promptly and soon found ourselves seated with aperitifs and olives.

The atmosphere, as mentioned in other reviews was lively but we saw this as a good point. It is the sound of people enjoying drink, food and most importantly life!

Our food was superbly cooked and presented, and arrived at our table at a perfect pace for social dining. We never felt rushed whilst having an attentive and polite waiter at hand throughout the evening.

Highlights of our dining experience included the delightful pork tortellini in sage butter which was kindly prepared as a starter portion at our request. The lamb ragu papardelle was also a standout pasta dish. The pasta in both cases being as fresh as we had ever tasted. Another very popular starter with our group was the prawn and squid fritti with aioli, which was demolished indescriminately by all of us!

Mains in our group included the 35 day aged ribeye steak cooked medium rare to mouthwatering perfection. we were going to go for the Beef Fiorentina to share but i don't like sharing! Maybe next time… The tuna steak combined unlikely but complimentary ingredients (treviso (a bitter red leaf), capers and balsamic reduction) to make a very interesting dish.

Dessert was a selection of what the waiter recommended and enough spoons to go around! We ordered the espresso icecream, blood orange sorbetto, chocolate and hazelnut cake and of course, the tiramisu. In my opinion, this is the only way to have dessert.

Antico is able to offer something that so many new london restaurants can't, atmosphere and quality combined. This is the kind of place you can laugh out loud and enjoy your food in relaxed friendly surrounds. This is how dining should be so don't expect silver service and tiny portions with blobs of foam…

This is not fine dining, it is GREAT dining.

We’re always being told first impressions count – sadly Antico didn’t do to well in this regard with me and I’m not sure I’ll be giving it a second chance.

The room itself is nice enough – a mix of dark wood, exposed brick and white paint – though it’s small (or compact as an early 90’s estate agent would have said) with too many tables packed in. Those closely packed tables are the source of the main downside – the noise – which is so loud it’s like trying to eat your dinner in a busy west end bar at 8pm on a Friday night; we tried shouting at each other across the table and got bored with it quite quickly, though we could hear the people all around us all too well.

Presumably the noise was also the reason they managed to mess up our order, though doesn’t excuse the other sloppy bits of the service. Once seated we waited far too long to get drinks and the first staff member who eventually stopped didn’t offer to help, instead just told us someone would be along in a minute. Ages past before someone took an order and just as long again before the drinks arrived and it was only at our insistence at that point that food orders were taken. After another long wait we were informed that ‘there has been a bit of an error with your starters’ – we were at least offered a free drink and some bread (which you normally have to pay for – and it’s not very good when you have paid) and eventually starters made an appearance. At least they were polite and pleasant so it lifted the awful to poor, but really not getting the basics even close to right is unfortunate.

I started with asparagus and wild garlic risotto – the consistency was rather more rice pudding than risotto though the tastes themselves were fine and the portion was generous. This was followed by pan fried bream with capers, olives and tomatoes – sadly the fish was just a touch over cooked and also really bland – it’s a charge that can often be levelled at fish, but go somewhere like Pollen Street Social to see how great fish can be when it’s cooked well. Dessert was raspberry and grappa panacotta; the overwhelming taste was of cheap alcohol poured in with a very heavy hand and the raspberries just sat atop a small cup of runny panacotta – it can be a great dessert when done properly, but this wasn’t.

The main plus point was that it was quite cheap – at around £45 per head for 3 courses, wine, water and service and the free drink etc made things seem a bit better, though I would have preferred to have avoided the errors that caused us to get this.

Bermondsey Street has a lot of options, but Zucca, Delfina etc are quite a way ahead of this for food, service and atmosphere and you’d be far better going to any of them ahead of Antico – I won’t be making the same mistake again.

Atico, I later learned means ‘ancient’ in Italian, however I do know that an Antiques once dominated the floor space of this very new Italian restaurant so I assume this is just an ingenious play on words.

The choice of name is not the only bewlidering inconsistency here – there is a cellar bar and and the restaurant has both bar style and formal table seating and is only open for dinner (apart from weekends). We only actually realised there was a bar downstairs by accident. The menu is also superbly confusing – there are three headings being Antipasti & Spuntini, Pasta & Risotto, Meat & Fish with a sub category of items titled ‘deli counter’ within Antipasti which basically was more starters and wasn't only served at the deli counter.

If I crudely categorising the first section, it was pretty good – a varied and interesting selection tasty Italian food from between £3-£7 tapas style – all the rage nowadays. Second courses (Pasta is also served in half main courses – or should that be starter size?) were a little lighter on imagination. The Pasta was excellent but with main courses mostly in the late teens and a satiated appetite after small plates we went no further.

There is a foodie mile along Bermondsey Street that stretches (almost) to Magdalen. José Pizarro is currently the Don with his two eponymous Tapas restaurants, the award winning Italian Zucca only a few steps away and an assortment of damn good gastropubs inbetween. It seems that Atico has attempted to incorporate elements of all these concepts and fused them into one and opened at the beginning of January.

I hope Atico does well. The food is good and the owner cares – hopefully it will find its own indentity, organise the menu and its opening hours.