Such is the ubiquity of Italian food in the UK, from Michelin-starred restaurants to small town trattorias, that you might assume that it would be difficult to mess things up. Even if more basic establishments are hardly going to be pushing culinary boundaries, it’s generally been my experience that you’re more likely to be disappointed by a dodgy curry than by an underwhelming bowl of pasta. There’s something, somehow reassuring, then, that there is an exception to every rule. Even if your reviewer found this out recently to his cost.
Similar to my recent reluctant return to Bombay Palace after an initial restaurant fail eight years prior, optimism rather than experience saw Gourmand Gunno revisit 2 Veneti last week, after an absence of almost nine years. Whereas Bombay Palace was let down by its service rather than the food, 2 Veneti struggled to impress on both counts. To give the venue some credit, to have been open for almost a decade must speak to a certain success. Perhaps other visitors have lower expectations. It would also be fair to say that the post-lockdown seating on tables placed to the edge of a cobbled mews adjacent to the venue was an inspired and rather charming idea. This was about as good as it got though.
As the name of the restaurant suggests, the angle behind 2 Venteti is to offer Venetian classics. I pity the poor Italian locals who might feel that their city’s culinary reputation has been undermined by what 2 Veneti serves up. Our waiter insisted that the whipped cod, fried capers and grilled polenta was the best starter with which to begin. Coincidentally (or not), it was the most expensive. I took his advice but received in return a mangled mash of an offering, utterly devoid of both flavour and texture, as grey as the London sky under which we sat. For a moment, I worried I had lost my sense of taste. At least my second course of Bigoli (Venetian pasta) was a little better, but only just. I do like my pasta al dente, but parts of this dish were almost inedible, chewy beyond being pleasurable with an accompanying ragout that may have been duck – as the menu claimed – or equally, may not. Oh, and the portion size was tiny. For ~£15, I might reasonably have expected more, but I guess it’s very good margin for the venue. The mark-up on my glass of red wine – which to its credit was not at all bad – was even more egregious. A little research found that 2 Veneti sells a 175ml glass of Toreldego (best described as a workhorse grape) for more than the suggested retail price of a full bottle.
Service was mixed, from over-bearingly keen (whisking our dishes away almost the moment they were done) to downright forgetful (getting the cutlery settings on the table wrong). I was not convinced either by 2 Veneti’s COVID-19 compliance. I spotted a server sneezing and not subsequently cleaning his hands. Meanwhile, the hands (fortunately a different pair) were touching directly the block of Parmesan from which shavings made their way onto our plates, rather than perhaps resting on an adjacent cloth or similar.
Credit to my dining comrade for securing a table anywhere in central London at short notice on a Friday lunchtime, but let’s just say that the three of us who dined at 2 Veneti all felt delighted that a much wider choice of venues are now available, with indoor dining back once again.