Garlic and easy listening

I grew up in south-west London in the 1970s when Italian restaurants had exposed brick walls and paper tablecloths in red and white squares and giant pepper pots and were owned by people called Franco who slapped your father on the back. The lasagne came in individual dishes, oozing deep red tomato sauce so hot it stuck to the edges of the dish and burnt your tongue. You cried the first time, but not again, because you loved Spaghetti Junction more than your own home. The perfect Italian restaurant was fixed for me then, in 1979, and that was it, because restaurants are about joy, not food.

And so I never liked their high-street descendants: Carluccio’s and Jamie’s Italian. The first was too pale and interesting, and the second too sloppy and disinterested. I have eaten in many West End Italian restaurants. They are too suave for me. They are too French.