In fact, it was about right - but not on the same plate. Never mind - the combination seemed about right. And there was agnello alla griglia con ceci marinati (grilled leg of lamb with braised chickpeas), though in my mood of bristling authenticity, those chickpeas were a problem. Cannelloni farciti con piedino di maiale e sedano rapa (pig's trotter and celeriac cannelloni) caught my imagination (well, it would, wouldn't it?).
Better still, it was warm, it was clean, it was bright, it was lively and it had tables to spare. And there was Manicomio, part of a new development on Duke Of York Square, a trim, tidy, modern, surreal parallel universe to the rest of Chelsea. It seemed an even better idea when, Tucker having booked us into a gastropub that didn't open for lunch, we trailed forlornly up King's Road looking for a sanity-saving alternative. A plate of top-quality mozzarella, still oozing whey or one of cured ham, pink as coral roasted leg of rabbit, brown and juicy, with a side plate of fried potatoes - that's what I want to eat. Ho-ho, I thought when I first read about it. It was an offshoot of a company called Machiavelli Foods, which imports high-calibre Italian produce for the restaurant trade in London. We'll eat plain grilled chicken with gusto in Rome or Florence or Turin, but serve such a naked dish in London, Manchester or Leeds, and people will complain about shortcomings and value for money. More to the point, schooled in the ways of French cooking and our own gastronomic past, a dish that doesn't have gravy or sauce and vegetables doesn't look properly dressed. Perhaps our own raw materials are just not produced to stand that kind of intense scrutiny. It may well be that no restaurant in the capital would survive the three-lamb-chops-on-the-plate treatment. But none of them serves up food of the kind of bare-boned simplicity and beauty that you find in the country of origin. There are several very classy Italian restaurants, too, Locanda Locatelli, Zafferano and Passione among them. Assaggi is the nearest you get to it in London, with Riva a stylish second. The trattoria at the back of Valvona & Crolla comes closest to the real McCoy in Britain, but Valvona & Crolla is in Edinburgh.
I think that I will have to abandon all hope of ever finding what strikes me as authentic Italian cooking in London. The first Director of the hospital, from 1913 to 1938, was Augusto Giannelli: under him the structure, originally designed to host 1000 mentally ill, reached the figure of 2602 4.Address: 85 Duke Of York Square, London SW3 Pavilion 6 hosts the Museo Laboratorio della Mente, a museum devoted to the history of psychiatry 3. Nowadays, some pavilions have been restored and dedicated to various health-care services, while many others still remain abandoned. The "Manicomio Provinciale" was immersed in a park and consisted of 43 buildings, 29 of them dedicated to the wards 2. The new "Manicomio Provinciale" took the name of Santa Maria della Pietà only in 1926, when the ancient psychiatric hospital in the Lungara street was finally closed. The first stone of the buildings was placed - in the presence of the King Vittorio Emanuele III - on the 28th of June 1909 and the construction was finished after less than two years, on the 31th of May 1911. Maria della Pietà, 5) until its closure in 1999 1. The old "Manicomio Provinciale Santa Maria della Pietà" has been the main psychiatric hospital in Rome (Piazza S.
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