Cafe Murano St James — Restaurant in London

Cafe Murano is an excellent, efficient restaurant, cooking interesting, tasty dishes in combination with a carefully curated wine list in a friendly - even romantic - atmosphere.

Just off Piccadilly, Cafe Murano does have a great reputation for a reason. The restaurant is beautiful, designed with attention to detail. This creates an atmospheric and relaxed environment. It is definitely a place I could recommend for a random dinner as well as for a date.

When I arrived, I was welcomed and given a nice table by the window. As walk-in I did not have a reservation, so I could only stay for about an hour. Knowing this, it was easy to get through my delicious dinner before the next booking.

The all-Italian line-up of wines by the glass is a nice selection of different regions and grapes. One white wine stood out for me - the Etna Bianco, Tenuta delle Terre Nere, Sicilia from 2014. Last year, I had a very interesting Azores white wine grown on volcanic soil at The Corkscrew Wine Bar in Lisbon. As I really enjoyed that one, I thought it would be exciting to find out how an Italian wine from Etna would taste. Volcanic wine is nothing I have seen on many wine lists, so I just had to seize this opportunity. If like me, you like mineral notes in a wine, the Etna Bianco is something you will enjoy. It is a pretty dry wine, yet the volcanic soil adds a certain depth to it missing in most other white wines. I can imagine that some people would not enjoy the characteristic flavour, but I think it's a great wine.

Soon, the complementary bread arrived, complete with a little sea of olive oil on a separate small plate. The bread was not sweet, nice on its own and even better with a bit of olive oil and pepper.

I had ordered the truffle arancini starter which was very nice together with the opionated Etna wine. The truffle added a salty sensation to the dish. Strong, but luckily not overpowering the beautiful risotto inside.

I was looking for a relatively small and light main, and the pumpkin gnocchi, sage butter, walnuts and gorgonzola was exactly what I wanted. I would almost call this dish a revelation. When I read the menu, I was not sure about the pumpkin gnocchi. However, it turned out that I actually now perhaps prefer it over potato gnocchi! The taste of the gnocchi was kind of neutral and smooth, and I think quite a bit lighter than potato would have been. The walnuts added a lovely texture to the plate and the salty gorgonzola perfectly enhanced the seasoning of the dish. Finally, the sage sauce made it a well-rounded and thoroughly enjoyable experience.

Choosing a small main left enough space for a dessert. I went for the chocolate tart with milk sorbet. The chocolate was dark and bitter as it should be with an impressively shiny glaze. The pastry was crispy but still easy to cut through. And the surprisingly light milk sorbet nicely balanced the rich chocolate flavour and helped cleanse the palate. And as if this would not be good enough already, the dessert also went brilliantly with the Etna wine.

After three courses, I left Cafe Murano very happy and satisfied that evening. Would I go again? Sure, any time - Cafe Murano really is an...

Before I sat down for dinner here, I had no idea that there was a lot of buzz behind this restaurant - in fact, I didn't even know who Angela Hartnett was. So there weren't any high expectations on my part, but this restaurant scored low in my books for a number of things that went wrong.

Lets start with the pros: special dish of the night, Hogget, was delicious. The meat was a bit gamey but tender nice atmosphere prices aren't exactly cheap but it doesn't break the bank if you want to have a nice meal

Cons: where was the service...?! Not that we need to be coddled 24/7, but we hardly saw our server that night. We had to flag him down to order a few things, but he didn't come around to ask if he can take our order we had a large party, and ordered 1 of all the appies on the menu. Only 5 came, and the rest were forgotten. No, not that it tasted bad - they were literally forgotten about. They tried to clear our dishes 20 minutes later, and we reminded them we still had dishes. We were never informed of the special of the day, until our orders were being taken around the table, and when I wanted the Hogget Ragu, the waiter said "Speaking of Hogget, we have a different special..". So there were a number of people who changed their order based on this the pork neck had flavour, yet was tender and dry at the same time. I didn't quite get it until I sampled a bite from the bf's dish. Definitely a disappointment. We ordered 1 of each side dish (should be pretty simple). They were all forgotten about, again. By the time it was almost ready to come out, everyone was done eating. We ordered 2 bottles of wine, both which arrived pretty much at the end of the meal. I think others were trying to slow down their eating to wait for the wine.

The meal slid in under £50 for a main, and shared in some small appies / few bites of tiramisu, a cocktail and glass of wine.

I'm really trying to remember details of the food, I don't think anything was wrong with it, but the scattered service made me forget about anything good about that night. The quality of food was overall good (except for the pork neck), hampered by the poor service and dinner experience, I'm (begrudgingly) rounding this up to 3 stars.

Perhaps they had a...

A mixed bag - some dishes are both sizeable and delicious, notably the crispy, chewy salt cod fritters, which could serve as a main for one person. But the monkfish (one of the most expensive dishes on the menu) was underwhelming, lacking in flavour with a surfeit of beans, a lack of sauce and monkfish that was borderline overcooked. The specials looked appealing, and the lamb gnocchi we ordered was rich and tasty but had one ingredient too many, and would have been more enjoyable without the addition of mint to the dish. Most disappointing was the dessert - the tiramisu was fine, but the chocolate cake was a bitter disappointment - dry and tasteless, to the extent that I did not finish it which I've only done once before. The drinks menu is curious, with unusual combinations that are pleasant enough, but seem to focus more on throwing unexpected flavours together than on creating an inviting drink. Our waiter was lovely, but that wasn't enough to make up for a disappointing meal that was much more expensive than better meals I've had in the same area. Overall, when there are so many convivial Italian restaurants that offer handmade pasta and other dishes with a warm, cosy atmosphere, places like Murano that don't offer exceptional anything (value, flavours, ambience) start to seem...