Dinner / £££ / 7.5/10

Our first visit to the highly anticipated Pici managed to coincide with a babysitter booking so we jumped at a 20.00 reservation on the Saturday the week the website went live. I followed on social media and made a few decisions before our visit. Primarily not to repeat the same mistake I made at Raymonds by ordering a cold steak.

We arrived to a nicely thrumming dining room, everyone looked relaxed and happy and the staff weren’t hurried or harried. You can see right through to the open kitchen and the interior is the essence of neutral. On closer inspection it has been really well done with different textures adding interest and a more luxe feeling.

We were advised to order between 4-5 dishes between 2 people as they serve small plates (well kind of, having seen photos of the steak, it looked massive) but we struggled to edit down to less than 6. The first dishes to arrive were the trout, the pizette and the courgette fritti.

The trout was well cured and when combined with every element on the plate (roe, cucumber, sauce and orange) made a very good mouthful, hitting smokey, pickled, salty and sweet it was a really strong start. I did a quick mental walk through the rest of our order and was glad we went a bit more than 4 plates as we were hungry. When the pizette arrived I took a small slice but stepped back and let The Northerner have the lions share. Whenever I am eating a pizzette/flatbread I find myself with 1 thought ticker taping through my brain “I wish this was a pizza”. For more mature palates the base was delicious and brought through all the knowledge from the success of Slice n Brew.

Next came the courgette fritti, despite The Northerner not liking courgette having seen photos I knew I wanted to try it. We squeezed over the lemon and from the first bite we were enamoured. The sweetness of the hot honey against the light crispy batter reminded me of pineapple fritters from a cantonese restaurant but with the lemon and ricotta elevating it from overly sweet to a triumph. This was the dish of the whole meal and we raced through it.

Next came the Taglioni, the pasta was al dente and the firmness meant the flavour of the pasta danced alongside the crab, chilli and pangrattato. The heat lingers at the back of this dish but after a couple of mouthfuls comes to the fore to remind you to slow down. I kicked myself when we finished it that we hadn’t ordered more pasta dishes to try. Then the plaice arrived and my immediate reaction was ‘oh’ – it looked (and tasted) rubbery and appeared to lack seasoning and butter. The parsley and wild garlic sauce did nothing to improve the dish and The Northerner couldn’t shift the taste for the rest of the meal. When the table was cleared we told our waitress that it wasn’t to our taste and they (very generously and without being asked) refunded 50% of the cost of the dish which we appreciated when we got the bill.

The last dish to come out the kitchen was the tomato dish, I am not sure if this had been forgotten or dishes come out as and when they are ready but it would have slotted into the earlier dishes with a lot more grace. As the last dish to arrive we enjoyed it, but felt like something was missing. No matter though we were ging to share tiramisu for pudding and I had high expectations.

I am a big fan of a tiramisu that looks like it comes from a vast tray in a refrigerated drawer (like this one does). It looked the part but on closer inspection I suspect they used milk chocolate on top and most of the sponge fingers hadn’t had the coffee soaking they need to contrast with bitterness against the creaminess. In its favour, the mascarpone had a decent level of booze in it so it definitely delivered 50% but we left half of it and felt a little disappointed.

With this being Pici’s opening weekend I was really impressed by the service. The restaurant was still welcoming reservations at 21.30 so their opening weekend will have been an undeniable success but I will definitely stick to pasta and fritti next time.