In the press part 2

Read more of the many winning plaudits our Fitzrovia restaurant has received from the press since opening this summer…

Toast of London: the Cin Cin pair on their London debut

Brighton & Hove-based Italian restaurant group Cin Cin has opened a London outpost off the back of a successful, pandemic-born delivery service.

Joe Lutrario, Big Hospitality 

This gorgeous and intimate neighbourhood Italian restaurant in Fitzrovia has just opened with 20 seats inside and 20 plus outside on a south facing corner with lots of afternoon sun, it’s perfect for alfresco dining. Service is utterly charming and the food is classically Italian but with lots of clever twists like a rich arancino of crab on a basil emulsion and a gnocchi which has had the Cacio e Pepe treatment. For dessert, they have the creamiest Zabaglione, one of Italy’s ancient Venetian specialities.

Service is utterly charming

THE LUXURIATE LIFE GUIDE TO A NIGHT OUT IN LONDON

No particular regional affiliation in Italy, and the menu bounces happily around Sicilian seafood and Roman pasta dishes — ‘just things we like’, says our waiter. When we visit that includes burrata with red pesto and asparagus, crab arancini, sea bream (crispy skinned and perfect), and a plate of Cuore di Vesuvio tomatoes — part of the antipasti, but so good if they’d been served as a dish in their own right we’d have still been heart-eyed over them.

There aren’t any lowlights, tbh. We reckon the would-order-again prize goes to the courgette cacio e pepe, with gnocchi, rather than pasta — bits of al dente Trombetta courgette scattered in there, velvety sauce, gnocchi soaking it up thirstily. And the tomatoes (see above in their no filter, eye searingly bright glory), with just a slick of pepper-laced vinegar across them, tasting about as vividly of Italian sunshine as a tomato can. Or the focaccia, with its fluffy, softly elastic springiness.

There aren’t any lowlights. 

Lydia Manch, The Londonist

Cin Cin started life back in 2013 when chef-owner David Toscano launched a pasta van in Brighton as a passion project on the side of his full-time job as a lawyer. Three years later, Toscano ditched his suits for good, donning an apron more permanently and bedding Cin Cin into a bricks and mortar building off thriving North Laine. It soon grew a reputation as the best pasta restaurant in the city, spawning a second site in Hove in 2018. Now, Toscano is bringing his concept to London, opening in the former site of lauded seafood restaurant Bonnie Gull on Foley Street. The intimate restaurant seats up to 30 and focuses on seasonal Italian dishes which may, depending on the time of year you visit, include: crab arancino with warm basil emulsion; ravioli of truffled potato with asparagus and confit yolk; and velvety date ice cream affogato with Tosolini liqueur.

Cin Cin indeed!

Best new restaurants: London 2021’s hottest gastronomic ventures, Culture Whisper