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Wednesday 20 June 2012

ZUCCA





Happy Birthday Blog !


Zucca Fritti Stacked


Calling Occupants Of Interplanetary Craft - taste this.



Pineapple Grilled Veal Chop, Spinach, Lemon


Bonet, Brittle, Hazlenut Ice Cream.


#27 Gateway to Heaven


Happy Birthday Blog

This blog celebrates a whole year documenting my Favourite Places To Eat and fate could not have allocated a more apt bingo number than # 27 for this blog, as Zucca really is Bermondsey's 'Gateway to Heaven'. 

Zucca's ambient aesthetic and service was flawless from start to finish and the ideal place to be ensconced reminiscing a year blogging, while out dining with my beautiful fun loving  partner.  Interestingly and perhaps this is Karma dealing her own card, nearly all of the images taken inside Zucca for this blog, [thanks to my partners artistic eye] have mysteriously evaporated due to the wonders of mobile phone data transfer technology. 

Karma perhaps because discreetly written on the Zucca menu, along the lower border edge is this little comment on dining etiquette:

'The use of mobile phones is both unsociable and unnecessary.'

Indeed. There is something eloquent in this statement, although perhaps a part is lost in translation. It would be interesting to define 'unnecessary' and to note the protocol should in a dire emergency the babysitter try to get through on your mobile to tell you she has had a quick cigie and accidentally just set fire to your kitchen pantry.

Zucca is still a young pup on the London scene - its name means Pumpkin in Italian. It is part of the much heralded Slow Food establishment, though there is nothing slow about their attentive service. In keeping with the impeccable standards of the River Cafe restaurant, Zucca is on this evidence serving the finest Italian modernist food in London. 

The whole area of Bermondsey Street has undergone an amazing transformation in the last decade and has the feeling of visiting Lower East Side New York. The antique conservation framers, with Bermondsey open antique market on their doorstep, provides a fascinating place to pop into before going next door for an aperitif before dinner.

The kitchen at Zucca is open plan and there is the sense of this being a dining theatre, with chefs seeming to create shapes of a ballerina as they attend to their hand drawn pasta.

They also know their wine here, Zucca being bestowed the Decanter Restaurant of the year for 2011.

We shared for antipasti: White Crab, Scrambled eggs and pangrattato and 'Zucca fritti'. You don't get the impression this place has a house speciality, they are simply too good at everything - if they did, these Pumpkin Fritti would be high up the list.  For mains we shared plates of Orechiette Pasta with Zucchini, Aubergine Tomato and Chilli and a rather incredible grid iron grilled Veal Chop with Spinach and Lemon. For pudding a Salt Caramel Ice Cream and a Bonet, Brittle, Hazlenut Ice Cream.

Again faultless.

Zucca do not charge for service and it is these little touches - when the service is  perfectly balanced between restrained, personable and delightful - that makes all the difference between the very good.... and then the really great restaurants.

Though I don't particularly find myself drawn to the name Zucca, for sure I will be raving to all and sundry about this utterly fantastic restaurant. 

This will be a hard act to follow and on the agenda for this blogs 2nd birthday is a trip tp Noma in Copenhagen, where to get a table, if you are lucky, requires booking three months in advance.




Favourite Places To Eat

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