Feast for the eyes – and the tastebuds
Maximalist Italian restaurant puts smile on customers’ faces
You may or may not have encountered the interiors trend of maximalism. If you have a giant china leopard in your living room or mourn the avocado bathroom suite that your parents hauled into a skip, you might even be a maximalist.
Basically, it’s the opposite of everything Mrs Hinch holds dear – no cane, straw or clear glass, nothing white and absolutely not a millimetre of grey visible to the naked eye.
When doing up the large unit on Edinburgh’s Leith Walk that was once La Favorita, the Vittoria Group decided this was the way to go. I’m imagining a meeting with MORE IS MORE written on an eye-burning mood board of tiles, patterned china and clashing shades of peach and forest green.
The menu too has had a glow up. The pizzas are still there, with colourful, modern toppings to match the upholstery. Purple potatoes feature in a couple and I suspect this is not an accident.
There are also pastas, starter-sized small plates and a few more substantial main courses. And a children’s menu, which Wee Chum was road testing by the time Nippy Sweetie and I negotiated the roadworks and parked the car.
He found the chicken goujons agreeable but reserved the star-eyes emoji for the accompanying bowl of chips. With him gainfully employed, we set about giving the rest of the offerings a thorough workout.
From the small plates section, the calamari was a stone cold classic well done and updated with a sage and beetroot aioli that matched the walls. I mistook this for Marie Rose sauce. What can I say, I was dazzled by the decor.
The polpette – meatballs – were large but light and well aerated. Someone in the kitchen has delicate fingers. They sat in a flavoursome tomato sugo punctuated with little rosettes of frankly filthy whipped ricotta. Old Chum and I fought over these but in a very ladylike way.
The mozzarella in carrozza – a fried piece on mozza with more of
the excellent sugo – was as wicked as it sounded. Fancy having something as great as a sandwich and thinking, yes, this is good but what if we sizzled it in butter?
Old Chum took the pizza route. She was drawn to the purple potato options, not least because of her enduring love for the 80s colour palette. But nduja won, partly to give Nippy Sweetie the opportunity to remind us that everyone feels better with a sausage inside them.
As well as smears of punchy, squidgy salami, there were slices of ventricina, a pork sausage that I would have identified as actual salami if the menu was not there to keep me right. With its puffy, char-spotted crust and dotted basil leaves, this was a handsome and toothsome pizza.
Nippy’s crab linguine was small and wildly rich. The strands were coated in a decadent butter cream containing the promised shellfish as well as rings of chilli. It was also, controversially, garlanded with parmesan. My understanding was that, for Italians, putting cheese with fish was akin to mentioning Mussolini in a train station. But maybe that rule has been ditched along with white plates. I enjoyed a mouthful but might have been defeated by a whole portion.
My beef tagliatta was the second most expensive dish on the menu, beaten only by hake with roasted red pepper which is 50p more. Ordering a spendier dish at a pizza and pasta place is a gamble but I was keen to see if the kitchen’s ambition was as bold as its flatware.
This was a fine tagliatta, a decent piece of ribeye cooked blushing rare and sliced crossways. The rocket gave it the peppery kick needed to balance the melty meat and salty hit of parmesan. Adding cipriani sauce – a spiky, runny mayonnaise – was a new one on me but I was not mad about it.
By this point, we were all well fed but decided to indulge Wee Chum’s passion for gelato. A strawberry crostata with four teaspoons was summoned. When we showed him the centre was made of cold mashed berries, he was back in his high chair and demanding we move out of his way. It was basically an assembly job – gelato, pastry case, lemon curd, sliced strawbs and rocks of meringue – but assembled from classy ingredients. Served on a magnificent patterned saucer.
Antonietta is a very clever construct. It’s a neighbourhood Italian brought up to date with outrageous interiors and modern ingredients. The staff are as warm as the wall tones, the tunes are as camp as Christmas. We came out well fed, smiling and wondering what to paint peach.