Artusi

good quality, good value cooking

A dark frontage punctuated by full-length windows reveals a spare-looking café-like interior, a narrow room with plain white walls and a constantly changing chalkboard menu – in short, Artusi is a ‘perfect neighbourhood restaurant’. Down some steps at the back, there is a chef's table for eight, with views of the open kitchen. This is Italian dining, Peckham-style, and none the worse for it. The infectious straightforwardness of the approach is reflected in a dinner menu that offers three choices at each stage, with a couple of intervening pasta options. Start, perhaps, with a pretty plate of roasted fennel, Russet apples, ricotta and walnuts before moving on to cod with butter beans, purple sprouting broccoli and preserved lemon aïoli or braised featherblade of beef accompanied by confit garlic mash and cime di rapa. Don't want to miss the pasta? Ravioli di erbette (stuffed with wild greens, ricotta and sage) may well have your name on it. The Italian way with carbo-desserts then produces an irresistibly toothsome pistachio and chocolate cake with crème fraîche. Lunch is a simpler affair (but similar in style), while Sunday brings a great-value set menu. Wines are not exclusively Italian, but those represent the best way of entering into the spirit. They've also got some oranged-up Sicilian Catarratto, if Pinot Grigio now seems a little vecchio cappello. A second outlet is now open at the Underbelly Boulevard in Soho.

Lively Italian restaurant in a business park with all the dishes that make you happy: fresh antipasti, homemade pasta, grilled salmon, pizzas and desserts.