Cicoria, Angela Hartnett restaurant review: Jamie Oliver vibes
Cicoria, Angela Hartnett restaurant review: great cocktails and panoramas, but the food and vibe feel more functional than fancy
I felt an arm on my shoulder at Wilderness festival this past summer, and it was Angela Hartnett. The Michelin-starred chef was doing a royal walkabout after her ‘banquet feast’, a gout-inducing three-hour scoff-fest so indulgent it would have wearied Henry VIII at his hungriest. I asked Hartnett why she was cooking at a music festival, whether it was fertile ground to experiment with new dishes. She guffawed at the idea: No! She said, quite the opposite: it was an operation of speed and scale, in putting out as much food as possible in a short time. It was as far away from a new testing ground as anything could possibly be. My romantic image was ruined.
A visit to Angela Hartnett’s new London restaurant reminded me of meeting the chef this summer, and particularly about our conversations to do with scale. Cicoria restaurant and bar at the Royal Opera House, her first new opening in London in 12 years, features the chef’s famous ingredient-led Italian cooking. The terrace has great views over the Covent Garden Piazza but is so massive that it lacks atmosphere.
There is the feel of Jamie Oliver about Angela Hartnett restaurant Cicoria: decent enough food, and seating to house half the home counties
We were offered a table at one end of the sprawling terrace but turned it down, fearing we’d be stranded after 7.45pm on a Friday night when the oldies had vacated for the evening. Halfway through our meal, that whole section of the restaurant was empty. Inside feels cosier: there are rusty bronze hues, and pleasing curvature to the design detail, much of it finished with soft furnishings like plush curtains and statement banquettes. But there is no Covent Garden view from here – that’s only available on the uber-long terrace. Vibe-wise, this certainly isn’t Murano, the chef’s Michelin-starred affair that’s been smashing it since 2008.
The food at Cicoria is split into cicchetti and anti pasti, primi pasta dishes and secondi meat and fish, and is mostly fine but nothing special. There is an encouraging start: the vitello tonnato with capers and anchovies is nicely presented and flavourful; the Guinea fowl agnolotti with Lardo di Colonnata comes as straightforward pasta parcels filled generously with pockets of rich bolognese-style meat.
Ligurian fish stew with bruschetta and basil is daintily plated and interesting enough with its seafood bounty, although the Ox cheek with crushed celeriac and horseradish is light on horseradish and tastes indistinguishable from a similar dish in a fine-but-forgettable gastro pub. Tiramisù is on the dry side; a caramelised Amalfi lemon tart a nice ending note as we’re booted out of the building at a few minutes to 11pm.
That’s the problem: a restaurant on the roof of the Opera House run by Angela Hartnett sounds great but it ends up feeling soberingly functional. You can’t stay late. Most people eat between 5 and 7pm which is useful for ordering produce and guaranteeing waitstaff jobs, but hardly the hedonistic Cicoria in the mind’s eye (on the subject of hedonism the cocktails are good, using fruit conserves and cordials in interesting ways).
Hartnett presumably has plenty of offers to put her name to things. Presumably she chose the Royal Opera House because who wouldn’t? But there is the feel of Jamie Oliver‘s fairly new Catherine Street restaurant about this: helpfully bland terrace furnishings that don’t offend, decent enough food and seating to house half the home counties. But Londoners want none of that.
To book new Angela Hartnett restaurant Cicoria go to rbo.org.uk