Have you ever seen a prettier shrimp? It's on the menu at Osteria Mozza: one giant prawn on a plate of pasta. You pull off the head and allow the drippings to shower over your plate. Then you eat the shrimp - with great delight - and finally twirl the pasta around your fork. So delicious.
This is the satsuki rice porridge at Orsa and Winston, a wickedly delicious concoction that borrows from both Italy and Japan. More rich risotto than spartan porridge, it's topped with sea urchin, scallops, salmon roe. I couldn't stop eating it.
I loved the restaurant's pickle plate too: each one so gently cured it retained its crunch. It was as if the word "vinegar" had been whispered across the plate.
And the house-cured culatello is superb.
Stopped by Hearth and Hound for dinner one night. It's one of the coziest restaurants I know, dimly lit, the table widely spaced so you can have a conversation. And on warm nights the patio is the place to be.
That spicy chicharron is a great way to start.
An admirable puntarelle salad revels in its anchovy dressing.
There's a wicked grill - flames leaping - and almost everything on the menu meets that fire. These shrimp perhaps? There's no better way to get messy hands....
Black cod with orange sauce.
And if you eat nothing else here, don't miss the charred cabbage. Laced with meat drippings and plopped atop a little oyster-scented puddle, it will change, forever, your notion of cabbage.