If you wanted to find the perfect Mayfair Italian restaurant, then Sparrow Italia ticks virtually every box that you could imagine. It’s the combination of superb service – always there, but never overbearing – with excellent food, a well-chosen wine list and, of course, cocktails that act as either the perfect overture to a meal or the digestif of your dreams. In other words, hie thee hence to this particular West End sparrow. You’ve just got to find it first.
It took me longer than I would necessarily have liked to negotiate the highways and byways lurking around New Bond Street, off which Sparrow Italia snugly sits. I put this down to incompetence rather than deliberately postponing the moment until my meal, but the moments spent cursing Citymapper soon slip away as soon as I’m sat down in a green velvet banquette, a plate of excellent toasted focaccia and più bella olive oil.
A cocktail list of various Italian-accented wonders is brought over, and before I know it, the waitress, clearly sizing me up as a likely type, recommends an Abruzzo, essentially their take on a Negroni. It’s all utterly sublime, and as the slow murmur of satisfied chatter spreads over from other tables, it’s time to peruse the menu.
Nothing that you will have at Sparrow Italia is designed to reinvent the wheel; this is a place designed not for trendsetters but for those only satisfied with Italian cuisine executed to the highest standards. So starters of lobster pasta – easily as good as the Aldo Zilli variety that was one of London’s most iconic dishes in the mid Noughties – and tuna tartare with crispy onions and avocado are classics executed to the nth degree.
They are, by their very nature, curtain raisers, and it’s in the mains that Sparrow Italia really excels. A pair of contrasting steaks – the fillet mignon and the NY strip – demonstrate that this is where Italian flair meets good-old fashioned carnivore instinct. Accompanied by a to-die-for Sicilian red recommended by the sommelier, and the truffle mash of your dreams, this is a decadent delight made all the more pleasurable by the sheer brio with which it’s all conducted.
We were, in truth, fairly full at this point, but the charms of the waiting staff meant that we were just about in the market for a tiramisu, which duly arrived in a vast sharing portion and was as delightful as everything else we had. It would not have been a repast without an espresso martini to match it, and my choice of the house special was a bold one, although in retrospect I may have been better off with the classic: the cream and marshmallow make this one ideal for those with a sweet tooth, whereas I am more of a conventional espresso martini man.
But no matter. It’s a suitably off-kilter finish to a fine meal that shows that there is a special providence in the flight of this particular Sparrow, and long may it last.
Sparrow Italia, 1-3 Avery Row, Mayfair, London W1K 4AJ. For more information, including details of its Miami outpost and forthcoming New York edition, and for bookings, please visit www.sparrowitalia.com.
