Enoteca Turi, London: restaurant review
Enoteca Turi feels at home in well-heeled Belgravia and has a cellar with more than 460 wines, but can it stand-up to the competition of new-wave Italian restaurants sweeping the capital? Read our review to find out...
Just a short stroll from the Saatchi Gallery in London’s well-heeled Belgravia, Enoteca Turi is more fine-dining than traditional trattoria – think dark woods, crisp white linens, a wall of exposed brick painted shimmering gold, and impeccable service.
The focus here, as you may guess from the name, is on wine – owner Giuseppe Turi trained as a sommelier at some of London’s top hotels and his cellar currently houses more than 460 wines, including lots of unusual, interesting grape varieties and lesser-known regions.
The relationship between food and wine is something that the team is passionate about, and you’ll find a match to each dish detailed on the menu, so you don’t even have to enlist the sommelier if that kind of stuff strikes fear into your heart.
The menu is inspired by regional Italian cuisine – each dish’s region is name-checked in brackets – presented in a way that transforms it from humble roots. Dishes are driven by seasonality, so you might expect to find artichoke heart, rich, slow-cooked egg and salty-sweet pecorino cream, or rich, silky beef carpaccio depending what time of year you visit.
On our visit, the kitchen had a too-heavy hand when it came to seasoning some dishes, but rich, deeply umami beef ragu slicked over candele di gragnano with a dusting of sharp, salty parmesan is a masterclass in classical flavours, although blobs of gently sweet cauliflower purée, for us, was an unnecessary addition.
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For pud, iconic tiramisu is ‘exploded’ into component parts – coffee sponge, cocoa crumble and marsala ice cream – which is not for the purist, but the sponge has the kind of light, airy texture and slight savoury edge that, when married with the marsala ice cream, keeps you coming back.
As a flurry of new-wave Italian restaurants sweeps the capital, Enoteca Turi is facing stiff competition, but if fine-dining Italian is what you’re after, this is a good bet. Our advice? Come for great wine, with a pasta dish on the side.
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