Il Bambini Club presents itself as a refuge of cosy Italian welcome, a place of seriously lush, enveloping interiors with the added seduction of the exclusivity of a club. It’s a restaurant brand with branches in Paris, Mègeve and now London. The latter to be found, fresh and new, in Shoreditch. Indeed, it’s actually in the lobby of the Hoxton Hotel on Great Eastern Street. Not that they’re upfront about that. Are they ashamed? Embarrassed? I mean, let’s be frank, the secret’s out once you find it.
And it’s not, as some hotel restaurants, accessible from a side door. (I’m thinking of Corrigan’s, for example, in Mayfair. That establishment is actually in The Grosvenor House Hotel, except that ballsy Richard Corrigan took a lease, put his front door on a side street and boarded up the access from the hotel.)
But Il Bambini is right there, access from the front only, in the Hoxton Hotel. So it would help, when you’re looking for it, if they just told you where it was.
Also it’s just a restaurant, it’s not a club. You don’t need to be a member, you just book a table at Il Bambini Club. But it’s just a name, right? Except, to this pedant, it’s an annoying name because Il Bambini should either be il bambino (the boy) or i bambini (the children). It would be like opening a British restaurant in Rome and calling it “Him’s wives” or “Their childrens”.
Sitwell: ‘Il Bambini Club presents itself as a refuge of cosy Italian welcome, a place of seriously lush, enveloping interiors’
I picked a large banquette in the centre of the restaurant to sit at with my pal. “You can’t use your laptop here,” they said. Which is the sort of thing they might say in a hotel lobby restaurant, not in an exclusive club. I’m here for lunch, I reassured them.
We sat magnificently comfortably. The room is beautifully, comfortably designed. There are rings of curved banquettes, all deeply soft and with lashings of cushions. And the menu is a lip-smacking prospect, covering antipasti, fritti, paste, pizze and piatti. Claudia and I metaphorically cast off our watches and bolted ourselves in, hoping storms, blizzards and snowdrifts would confine us.
We ordered from each section, setting out a path through the menu to honour a proper Italian lunch. It would be a journey of classics: vitello tonnato, zucchini fritti, beef ragu pappardelle, veal Milanese and maybe a tiramisu to finish. Jealous? Well, er, here goes.
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The vitello tonnato delivered veal, thinly cut of course, that was as dry as a bone, though it was rescued by the tuna sauce and the gherkins and capers did their perking up duty. But alongside it was the zucchini fritti – not, as you might expect, little thin, matchstick-type straws, all crisp and fun to help your early sips of wine. No, these were little deep-fried roundels, acting more as a veg side to the surf ‘n’ turf vitello tonnato rather than a standalone snack, and were wholly miserable and fatty.
Still, there was a classic pasta to come next and Claudia had also popped in her protein order of tiger prawns to follow. Except the weirdest, most spirit-crushing thing then happened, a full, bright-white-lights-turned-on-at-the-disco-at-midnight moment. Our kind and attentive waitress arrived with the prawns first (dashing our hopes of a pasta respite), but then, quick as a flash, she was back at the table with not only the pappardelle but the veal Milanese, too.
The tiramisu was very fine – rich and creamy, says Sitwell – but the serving size is quite large
We pulled back the horses amid considerable whinnying. What kind of Wagamama, every-dish-comes-the-moment-it’s-ready horror show was this? The prawns were served in a nicely spicy red sauce but were themselves a touch over, and by the time we reached the pasta it was cold. So we ate it like last night’s leftovers but were less forgiving.
We asked for the veal to be sent out again, fresh and hot, and it returned anew, albeit too speedily and lacking in salt. Before you could say “piano, piano”, along came a huge tiramisu. Very fine, rich and creamy – dreamy in fact – but enough for four.
Il Bambini needs to calm the hell down, reset its service in line with the rich, calm décor, and sort out that flaccid fritti.
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Dining and Cooking