Osteria 60 - Removed from website November 2021 (closed) , London

On a balmy Tuesday evening in June, the terrace at Osteria 60 was a thing of beauty. Perched across from the western corner of Hyde Park, the sun touched down behind big oaks bursting with greenery and London seemed to retreat into the background as if we were on holiday. The new restaurant is attached to Kensington stalwart The Baglioni Hotel, which has made a name for itself in west London for turning the swank up to eleven. They've updated the dining room to keep it spruce and stately, and brought in chef Ivan Simeoli to create food in line with its latent Italian glamour. 

The elegant design was overseen by the Arth Group in conjunction with Milanese firm Rebosio + Spagnulo and is a rather grown-up setting. With eighty-eight covers, it's an intimate space with a statement bar that pays homage to north Italy's upscale trattorias - you could easily see it being transposed brick by brick from Florence or Milan. The creamy taupe chairs and wall coverings are accentuated with slick black borders. The entire room smacks of restrained class - there's nothing over-the-top opulent or showy to distract from the food. 

Ivan Simeoli is a man obsessed with seasonality, which he's brought to the table across a number of different kitchens - for Oliver Peyton at The Wallace Collection and The Royal Academy, as well as at Arkady Novikov's Rififi Club. What he also brings is a playfulness to Italian cooking, splicing different regional cuisines and switching out ingredients with confidence. The best example of this was his scialatelli amatriciana. Whilst the classic trattoria tomato sauce was still piquant with chilli and flavour-bombed with unctuous lardons, Simeoli opted to stud it with toothsome hunks of smoked cod and crown it off with crisp cured ham. It was a lovely dish and demonstrative of a chef with the guts to remake a classic.

A seabass carpaccio starter was similarly unorthodox - shimmering white slices of fish were topped with slivers of blood orange and iodine grenades of sea urchin. However, we were perhaps a bit more impressed by the simplicity of sheep's ricotta ravioli with Amalfi lemon, served with a small gracile shard of lemon meringue. Anyone who enjoys the unadorned sophistication of Italian country dining will be charmed by this upmarket version. 

Our favourite dish of the evening had to be the main though. Simeoli took a generous tranche of turbot and spread it with nduja, and grilled it to a crust under the salamander. The hearty flesh of the meat really stood up to the salt and spice of Calabrian sausage, and both were tempered with the softness of pickled courgette (the dish incidentally resembles the tricolore flag). Desserts were funky yet finessed. A deconstructed tiramisu put ice cream, a caramel tuile and coffee meringue to work to create a dish that could well woo the haters (tiramisu always seems to get such a bad rap) whilst the traditional Amalfi lemon tart was paired with an almost alkaline sorrel sorbet. 

We were very pleased with The Baglioni's newest restaurant, and particularly with Chef Simeoli's inventive reimagining of Italian standards.

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