Rossopomodoro, 50 - 52 Monmouth Street, Covent Garden, WC2H9EP

http://www.rossopomodoro.co.uk/

So the hubs and I decided that Day Two in our Two Day London Adventure was to be Date Day. This meant that we could eat, drink and spend as much as we (I) liked without considering the costs (within reason, of course). This, to someone in my profession, is something quite foreign and hard to comprehend. Because my profession kinda pays peanuts.

But since the rules were established, Date Day could begin.

After having had a brunch served up by the comfortingly rude waitress with just the right amount of scorn on her face for us (customers) from Le Pain Quotidien (story for another post, and yes, I shall post about that), we hadn’t eaten much else that day.

The idea was that since our train leaving London was around 9pm, we’d have dinner around 6-ish before heading to collect our bags from Waterloo station. But because we had to go to Selfridges to get one of those coffee machine thingees, and because we didn’t want to be carrying that thing around London, we had to eat our dinner first before going to Selfridges.

How now, brown cow? Oh well, gimme a glass of that prosecco.

We ordered the Affettato (£8.90) to share.

Black provolone Auricchio cheese, spicy Neapolitan salami, pecorino cheese from Bagnali, Mordadella cubes with cherry tomato jam and freshly baked bread in the brown paper bag.

The salami was salty and full of texture, but my favourite part of the meal was the cheese. Tomato jam was good, but didn’t taste tomato-ey enough to me, so I actually wondered, for most part of the meal, what it was.

Bread with olive oil and balsamic vinegar was a welcome nibble, but the bread was one of those gum-nemesis ones which just would not get soft no matter how much oil and vinegar was used. Enjoyable, on the whole, but it made the jaw ache a little after.

Tough on the outside. Tough on the inside.

The Carbonetta (£12.50) – seafood carbonara ‘spaghetti ala chitarra’ with crispy pancetta, eggs, clams, pecorino cheese and parsley. While the pasta was cooked perfectly, I found the taste to be slightly lacking in salt, as well as cheese. The cheese used in this dish is meant to be quite strong from the other carbonaras I’ve had, but this one didn’t really taste of anything. I suppose I could’ve added salt to it, but that’s not the point of this, so while I enjoyed it OK, I wouldn’t have said this was one of the better example of a carbonara I’ve had.

Fru Fru (£14.00) – Oval shaped three season pizza: buffalo ricotta cheese and Neapolitan salami, mozzarella cheese and tomato sauce, Parma ham, rocket and Parmesan cheese.

Really enjoyed this pizza. The base was perfect – not too chewy, but chewy enough, and the taste of the slightly salty dough managed to come through despite the strong-flavoured topping. The ricotta cheese was fluffy and just melt-in-the-mouth, and the chef must have been feeling generous that day with the amount of salami thrown on but I’m not complaining. Enjoyed this pizza in every way.

We’ve been here in the evenings before and also during lunchtime and it gets pretty crowded, so if you’re interested in making a visit to the place, best either make a reservation beforehand, or come when we did (around 5pm) and you can have pretty much the whole restaurant to yourself.