We had lunch at the Italian restaurant in Leadenhall Market yesterday which is named, with great originality, Leadenhall Ristorante Italiano. It has gone through a number of incarnations since the days it was a gents toilet and is rather like eating in the City used to be in the 1980s.We had Spaghetti Con Aragosta which consisted of half a fresh chopped lobster in a tomato and lobster sauce followed by chicken supreme filled with spinach and Mozzarella cheese, wrapped in Parma Ham roasted and served on a cream and white wine sauce with mixed mushrooms.
Service was very good and only slightly over enthusiastic as Italians can be. Our waitress was Polish, inevitably, with a rather inticing miniskirt which then had a slit up it as well for good measure which displayed a very toned thigh.
We ordered the Gavi di Gavi, La Scolca, which Barone A always insited on when we ate out in Rome. It was also a great favourite of Principessa M and Principessa I. The wine, in many ways, is Italy's Cloudy Bay. Grown by the Soldati family, the Cortese grapes used come from a small 62 acre site in Liguria. First appearing in 1966 La Scolca pioneered modern, what would now be called New World, techniques delivering a full bodied wine in an area more well known for pale straw coloured light wines. La Scolca keeps well for 10 years making it very unusual for an Italian white. The one we had was the 2004 black label. The real success of La Scolca has been clever marketing which sees it as one of only 2 out of 200 wines served on the Venice Simplon Orient Express and as the first wine at dinners given for opening nights at La Scala as well as a host of Italian State banquets. This goes some way to explain the £42 price tag!Never mind, the first taste (I haven't had La Scolca since 1991!) brough back a lot of memories. "It tastes like Princess I" I observed to my dining companion. Not entirely true, as she tasted more like oysters..
