Carl Johan's review of Il Convivio

I must admit that I have a bit of a negative bias to Italian restaurants after a few too many of them trying so hard and charging even harder. After all, the Italian cuisine is rarely overly complicated, right?!

Anyway, I had a pleasant experience at Il Convivio. I would have preferred to sit further in the restaurant, under the skylights, but it wasn't bad in the section before. The food was well presented and definitely delivered. I had a carpaccio for starter and a crab linguine as main. Apart from the pasta being a bit less warm than I would expect, it was very tasteful. I do react to paying almost 20 pounds for a dish that I probably could do quite well myself (wouldn't bet on it, but still). Finally, the service left nothing to complain about, very discreet and the sommelier was very quick to react to the unfortunate corked bottle of wine we nearly were served.

All in all, nice place, but I think I prefer other Italians to this one.