Cafe Murano

Angela Hartnett opened the St James’s branch of Cafe Murano in November 2013, taking the Northern Italian cooking she made her name with at Murano round the corner and putting it into a more relaxed, everyday format aimed at people who might drop in more than once a week rather than saving it for a single big occasion each year.

The food draws on the regions of Northern Italy rather than following a generic trattoria template: proper handmade pasta made in house, simply cooked fish and meat given room to speak for themselves, and a wine list that favours Italian producers over the usual international default that many London Italians fall back on. It is comfort food executed with a chef’s level of care rather than genuine casual dining prices, and the gap between the relaxed setting and the bill is worth knowing before you book a table expecting a bargain.

Its position just off St James’s Street means it does brisk pre-theatre and post-theatre trade, with dedicated menus timed around West End curtain times, and a good number of regulars from the surrounding clubs and offices who treat it as a canteen with noticeably better cooking than that description implies to anyone who has not eaten here. Weekend lunches bring a slightly different, more relaxed crowd, and the kitchen leans on braises and roasts rather than the quicker dishes served on weekday evenings.

Head chef Sam Williams runs the kitchen day to day under Hartnett’s overall menu direction, and the consistency across repeat visits tends to be good, which is not always true of restaurants trading this heavily on one well-known chef’s name and reputation rather than kitchen discipline.

The honest caveat: prices sit noticeably above what the ‘cafe’ branding and relaxed room suggest at first glance, and the St James’s location can feel a little corporate at lunchtime given the office and club crowd it draws. That is not necessarily a flaw, but it is worth knowing if you are expecting something smaller and more intimate than what you actually get.