Lardo, 22nd March

Lardo is just lovely. It has perfectly positioned itself as a neighbourhood restaurant and was exactly the kind of place we fancied for a Sunday evening meal out, that was full of fresh and tasty, good food without us going overboard. It’s the kind of restaurant you can just pop to on a whim – no special occasion needed. Except for the fact that if you do that on a Saturday night you will probably find the place full.

And there is good reason for this. As I said, we kept things fairly simple and the food is relatively simple. The menu is quite short but long on Italian specialities. Lardo is a type of cured meat and while they didn’t have just this on the menu they do cure all their meats in house (and it made an appearance on my pizza). We orderered the burrata and lomo (I think) to start, and also asked for some bread. The burrata was so creamy without being soggy, with a good dose of salt and oil (basil flavoured, I can't remember) and the meat was silkily fatty.

After our meat mound at Blacklock the previous night neither of us wanted to go down that route again. Stephen had the grilled mackerel and I had the spinach, egg and lardo pizza. This was such a good pizza - so much flavour. The egg was the right side of over for me, not running all over the place, and no uncooked white. The lardo was placed in thin sheets across the pizza like gossamer, almost hiding among the spinach until you put it in your mouth and it surprised you with its meaty bloom. I thought it might be too doughy and that I would miss the tomato but that wasn't the case at all. You could really taste the depth of the cheese - I enjoyed every mouthful, but there was a lot there so I gave a good fraction of it to Stephen to enjoy as well. 

I was treating us and so dessert had to happen. We had a chocolate tart which came with crème fraiche (bleugh) and was indulgent without being sickly - it was more cake than tart. I'd go back to eat here in a heartbeat.