2025’s sadly anticipated raft of closures started with a biggie: in January, Michelin-starred Locanda Locatelli announced it would be shutting its doors after 23 years. While in a recent podcast interview Giorgio Locatelli seemed to suggest this had been on the cards for some time, it still shows that no restaurant is immune from the well-publicised rising costs. But like so many closures, it’s not the end of the story, and it’s exciting to see new projects emerge (cf Tom Brown at The Capital or Stevie Parle’s Town). For experienced chefs of any gumption another door invariably opens – in this case the new Sainsbury Wing at The National Gallery.
Museums and galleries seem to be a popular choice for well-known restaurateurs finding a new or additional home. In some cases, such as José Pizarro at the Royal Academy of Arts, it works. In other cases, it misfires…
Before I roll my sleeves up and get my critical scalpel out, there have to be some caveats: as with all restaurants in large spaces there is an inevitable impact on ambience and service. (That said, a large characterless space per se is no excuse: Theo Randall at The Intercontinental doesn’t even have windows but Theo’s generous food more than compensates for that odd dining room.) Giorgio is also a respected chef and, at least for some time, Locanda Locatelli was one of the hottest places in town. It wouldn’t really be fair to compare his new casual offering to his former Michelin-starred restaurant – that would be like judging a Brasserie Blanc by the same standards as Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons – but equally, any restaurant where the bill comes close to £100 per head for three courses has to get the basics right.
Let’s delve deeper into that utilitarian space first. Designed by LXA Projects and overseen by Searcy’s, this beige canteen is essentially an airport Carluccio’s slap-bang in Trafalgar Square. It’s as neutral as Switzerland in appearance (and, apparently, the food, but we’ll get to that). The only thing to really counteract the fifty shades of oatmeal and kids running around (even during its once-weekly evening opening) is the striking bar overlooking the High Commission of Canada. At said bar it was pleasing to see the cocktails take inspiration from Italian mixologists and bars, including nods to Salvatore Calabrese’s Breakfast Martini, Bar Termini and my beloved Baudry Greene in Covent Garden, though notably the honoured bartenders here are predominantly male with very little female representation.
I admittedly made an off-menu request for my aperitif, preferring something made à la minute rather than pre-batched. Surely, for a well-stocked bar and one boasting such credentials, a classic martini would not be a huge ask. It turns out it was, the response from my waiter being the most perplexing. “What’s that?” he asked, hoping for some sort of divine intervention. “Oh, that’s that gin drink, innit?” he suddenly remembered. He also didn’t take any notes all evening, so as predictable as Trump is unpredictable, orders were mixed up or forgotten. No doubt they’ve parachuted in agency staff to help out on their weekly evening shift but there’s some serious training to be done.
To accompany the sopping wet martini, I nibbled on a pricey snack of whipped goat’s cheese with seeded crackers (£7), the crackers being more of an ambush than an accompaniment, the ratio almost hilariously in their favour. The hospitality for which Italians are famous seems to be quite lacking here with no sense of being in someone’s casa. Would it be too much to offer customers free chunks of parmesan and olives like they dole out at Ciao Bella, Vecchio Parioli or The Donovan? The breadsticks, focaccia and charcuterie at Murano?
Tagliatelle al ragù
Pot-roast chicken and polenta
Lemon tart
Not the best start but I soldiered on with the tagliatelle al ragù for primi (£18). Now, there are as many recipes for this as there are people, but I think we can all agree that it should be slow-cooked for hours so that the ingredients in the sauce can really get to know each other and cling to the ribbons of pasta like a wet shower curtain. You can’t hurry love. The tagliatelle itself was OK but the sauce (and therefore the dish) was like a student’s rushed Spag Bol after a night on the tiles: insipid, too wet and with clumps of meat. The only seasoning would come from the parmesan but the same waiter from earlier, who started to grate the cheese over it, walked off half-way, resulting in the most egregious case of gratus interruptus. (Why not leave a little bowl for customers to add parmesan themselves, as they do at Brutto?)
Hoping for redemption in the rustic pot roast chicken, the vegetable and taggiasche olive sauce here was good, the skin on the chicken delightful, but these were upstaged by a slab of overcooked polenta as conspicuous and bewildering as the monolith at the beginning of 2001: A Space Odyssey. Except this isn’t sci-fi, this is a £25 reality with polenta harder than a seaside stick of rock. Once I successfully cut through its outer crust the polenta within was as grainy as an exfoliating facial scrub.
When I came here I wasn’t expecting ambrosial perfection or London’s answer to Massimo Bottura but was at least hoping for an experience just a tad more thrilling than a mortgage application. As we know, for a country that is hyper-regional, where there are variations in culinary traditions even between families, there really isn’t such a thing as “Italian food”. There’s a golden opportunity here to show some of Giorgio’s Lombardy background and big personality and yet none of that was evident – just the false promise of a Juliette balcony or an Autumn Statement.
Also, when they extend their hours to the evening on Fridays, everyone gets kicked out at 8.45pm. Now, to be fair, their 9pm closure time is made clear on the website, and their hours are dictated by the gallery. But I couldn’t understand why they were still accepting dessert orders at 8.30pm, and I certainly wasn’t prepared for the spectacle of security guards ejecting people who were still eating their meals. This is allegedly a restaurant, not a pub handing out plastic beakers at last orders.
But look, it’s not terrible. For a post-exhibition spot of lunch it’s just about passable. Times are tough and perhaps they’ve been in a rush to get revenue pouring in. But whatever this place is trying to be, it’s got quite some distance to go before I’d recommend it to anyone for a memorable dining experience. And definitely avoid the weekly dinner service.
The National Gallery
Trafalgar Square
London
WC2N 5DN
June 2025
