School Holiday Treat - Polpo

One thing that you should know about me is that I am not an early adopter of technological trends. I don't particularly like technology, and I certainly don't leap to embrace it. I only got my first mobile phone about 5 years ago and I resent my dependence on it. I think mobile phones make people impolite and disorganised. I don't do Facebook. I don't do Iphones. I have an ipod but the poor thing languishes in my desk because I refuse to learn how to use it. And I don't do Twitter.

I must admit, there is a certain inconsistency in a blogger not liking technology, but it's not as if I was an early adopter of web-logging.

The drawback to all of this, is the "cutting off my nose to spite my face" element. I don't find out about the underground markets, the pop-up restaurants, the hot new eateries until they are mainstream, and even when I do hear about them I tend to refuse to go until the Tweeting classes are bored and have moved on to something else.

Which is why I have only now been to Polpo, on Beak St. And that's a shame, because it was lovely.

Jude and I decided that little plates of Venetian food would be just the thing for our Easter school holiday treat. Going at lunchtime also avoids the necessity of queuing, because they do take bookings for lunch.

We weren't entirely sure how many plates we should order, so we consulted with the waiter, and I think we got it bang on.

To begin with we had some chicheti and crostini - little, individually priced morsels. The chicken liver crostini was absolutely delicious. The parmesan and potato croccheta was as tender, velvety and cheesy as you could want (I could easily have made a meal just of them). Unfortunately the salt cod on polenta was less successful - the polenta was freezing cold and made an unpleasant base for the even more unpleasant woolly shreds of soaked salt cod.

Then we had a lovely fritto misto, a perfect rabbit terrine, a very delicious dish of pork belly with radicchio and hazelnuts and some absolutely gorgeous white beans cooked with wild garlic.

For dessert, Jude had a glass of vin santo, with very nice-looking biscotti for dunking while I had a honey and walnut semifreddo. I would have preferred the semifreddo in a bowl - I don't really like icecream cones - but it was very good, and as the last inch of the icecream cone was solid dark chocolate, I thoroughly enjoyed it.

With a bottle of wine, and a 12.5% service charge, it came in at £30 each. Very good value, I thought!

Unfortunately, it was so noisy that we didn't feel like sitting longer over coffee. There isn't much point in a long gossipy lunch if you can't hear the gossip! But definitely worth another visit, when the food is more important than the conversation.

By the way - Urchin now has her own blog. If you are interested in more photos of my beautiful cat, they can be found at http://urchinsphotos.blogspot.com/. I'm not sure how often that one will be updated, but at least once a week, I think!