After a week in which Israel triumphed at the Eurovision Song Contest with second place – western Europe is for them, eastern Europe slightly less so (plus ça change) – I review Babbo, the new neighbourhood restaurant in St John’s Wood. Restaurants tend to drift in, settle and drift onwards here. The Victorians knew it as a land of mistresses and smut; now it is a world of private hospitals, bad parking and MCC members, who seem bewildered by it all, as if Lord’s landed like a spaceship in an alien land. Only Oslo Court seems impregnable, because it manifests Jewish solidity – it is disguised as the home of your cousin in a mansion flat – and Jewish subversion. It is a specialist in seafood and cream cakes. Everything else comes and goes.
In a high street dedicated to underwear, estate agents and aesthetic medicine, it is pleasing to find something as useful as an Italian restaurant. There is an Ivy, of course, but it is generic – it reminds me of Sleeping Beauty’s castle without the magic or ambition – and a Gail’s. Idiots hate Gail’s because they think it is an augur of gentrification. They might as well count blades of grass as perform their stupid activism here. They are a century too late.
Babbo is double-fronted, and it speaks to St John’s Wood’s myths: it means Daddy. A Daddy who double parks and buys underwear. It used to be Harry Morgan’s deli (born 1948), a cheesecake and salt beef bar so beloved that one reviewer said Babbo was dancing on his grandparents’ graves. This is unfair. Nothing lasts for ever.
Even so, Babbo knows it is more than a common restaurant. It must fold itself into St John’s Wood or die – unlike Mayfair, this is an emotional district. Babbo must be an extension of the mistress’s villa and the private hospital. It must give you what you want. All good restaurants exist to infantilise: in St John’s Wood, more so. The pudding waiter at Oslo Court would follow you home if you asked. He would do anything.
Babbo’s awnings are dark red. The interior is a frenzied minimalism of creams and reds; it has a lounge bar that is dangerously fashionable. I do not like this style particularly – my idealised Italian restaurant, the late Spaghetti Junction of Teddington, exists for ever 40 years ago, as if in one of those bad Hampstead novels about memory. (I recommend its successor, Shambles.) But that is only my tribute to Spaghetti Junction, the first restaurant I loved, and interesting decor is expected. Babbo must seem different or you would stay at home. Oslo Court is the exception.
All good restaurants exist to infantilise: in St John’s Wood, more so
The hours are of a brasserie, not a restaurant; the food is both serious and serene. We ignore the serious food (cod, veal, salmon, lamb) and eat mini burgers (£15) which we don’t need: the portions are immense. We have a margherita pizza (£15), which is fine; and a vast, very beautiful lasagne (£22). The restaurant is full: it met its spot between sex and death. It will do well. We don’t eat pudding: the size of the lasagne forbids it.
Four people are seated at the next table. After ten minutes they leave, saying they are cold and it is noisy. In St John’s Wood speak – and I accept this sounds mad, but these are my people and I understand them – it means they like it. They will return with ear plugs, in fur coats, probably on a Monday: the set lunch is £25.
I drink coffee, and feel the light of belonging.
Babbo, 29-31 St John’s Wood High Street, London NW8 7NH; tel: 020 3725 1414; babborestaurant.co.uk.
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