Osteria Vibrato, London: Pasta, a piano and a note of magic -- restaurant review

For dessert, the kitchen at Osteria Vibrato performs the restaurant equivalent of a close-up card trick. They bring out a plate of soft amaretti biscuits, baked to order and still hot, the cracked, icing sugar-dusted surface of each one indented from the press of the pastry chef's thumb. I bite in and get something sweet and chewy but also with that weirdly boozy hit ground almonds somehow conjure. I know how it's done, but that doesn't stop it being its own delicious swish of magic. They formed the raw biscuits before service. They whacked them in the oven when the order came in. It's not complicated. But by God, this freshly baked thing is effective. They taste as if someone is determined to keep you on side until the very last. There's a lot of that about the newly opened Osteria Vibrato, which is located on one of Soho's more interesting stretches, between Noble Rot and the shop where I get my knives sharpened. The room, with its half-wood veneer-panelled walls, white tablecloths and dribbling wax candles, manages to make me feel nostalgic for something I didn't experience: the trattoria boom of 1950s Soho. It was a time of steaming coffee machines newly arrived from Milan and the unfamiliar thrill of spaghetti vongole; of gangsters on the take and Francis Bacon prowling the Colony Club for fleshy diversions. My table is near the door. Occasionally, as it opens, I get a waft of fresh cigarette smoke. It smells so good. It's a drunkenly scribbled postcard from the lad I once was, or the Soho that may once have lurked outside. If you have never smoked, you will rightly think this disgusting. Many of us who did once have a habit will always yearn. About an hour into dinner there is the tinkle of knife tapped on glass. Charlie Mellor, opera singer turned restaurateur by way of sommelier, is introducing the pianist for the night. The bubble of chatter subsides for a moment, then lifts again only now with the blue tones of "Willow Weep For Me" striding underneath. At which point I am ready to declare my love: beautifully executed regional Italian food, an impressive wine list and a piano player who knows what he's doing. What more do you want? It helps that Mellor, who made his name at The Laughing Heart in Hackney, fits the role. He is broad-shouldered and bearded and looks like he could have stepped in to wrestle Oliver Reed naked in front of the fire in Women in Love, if Alan Bates had ever needed a breather. That, or he could bang out a bit of Don Giovanni. One night he probably will. He didn't call it Vibrato by accident. Downstairs in the loos you will be serenaded by piped opera. We must not be too beguiled. For all their easy exotica, the trattorias of the 1950s were apparently cheap and democratic. This, however, is a restaurant straight out of the 2026 playbook. The menu is written performatively in Italian on one side of the sheet, and English on the other. There is a £3 cover charge, which pays for bread, salty olives and mineral water. The food, cooked by a graduate of Quo Vadis and Toklas, involves quality ingredients, for which they charge accordingly. They will dress your dishes with specific olive oils, wielded with a flourish. It is all summed up by the tagliatelle with a "white courtyard ragù". I ask our waiter what that means. "Well, traditionally it would have been made from the animals scampering around the farm courtyard." So rabbits, rats? "That sort of thing, and the odd cat. But we make ours with rabbit, pork belly and a bit of offal." He has described a prime example of cucina povera, of the humble elevated beyond itself, only re-engineered here for the not-so-humble who can afford £29 for a bowl of handmade pasta with a butch meaty sauce. A huge pepper grinder, which would fetch a fair price on Hamburg's Reeperbahn, is deployed to great effect. There is a strong list of antipasti, though the best option is to choose the selection. We have the hot, rustling fritto misto, underpinned by crisp fronds of fennel, which barely leaves a grease mark on the paper beneath. It's followed by a plate bearing a heap of shaved artichokes with pecorino on one side and, on the other, two pristine Sicilian red prawns grilled to turbo-power their sweetness. The third offering is a round of fatty, gelatinous Cotechino sausage on a pile of mashed swede with plum mostarda. It is bright pink, unashamedly duodenal and clearly not for everyone. My companion describes it as tasting of "warm raw baby". It is not to my taste but I admire its lack of good manners. A grilled plaice with capers is rather less challenging, in a very good way, as is a terracotta dish of scalloped potatoes, cooked down in stock with handfuls of rosemary to produce something akin to the bronzed topping of a well-made Lancashire hotpot without the gubbins beneath. The extensive wine list is roughly divided between France and Italy. It is one of those with jumbled prices, but Mellor is a good guide. Do, however, be aware that it won't make for a cheap night out. Or hit the extensive cocktail list, essentially a broad collection of the classics, described as "Things we love which we would be happy to make you". It is not clear what would happen if you asked for something they were not happy to make. We finish with those amaretti biscuits and a slab of fudgy hazelnut cake with chocolate sorbet, which manages to be both intense and clean-tasting. It means dinner is done and we must leave this room, which instinctively feels like somewhere you should want to linger a while. Of all the magic tricks performed by any restaurant, that is the greatest. Email Jay at [email protected] Find out about our latest stories first -- follow FT Weekend Magazine on X and FT Weekend on Instagram