Alberto's Lounge: Restaurant review

Alberto's embraces its billing as Restaurant Hubert's Italian cousin with gusto: same soft-lit charm, smooth service, plush carpet and wood panelling, but a little more bustle, a little more jostling for space, and (just maybe) a little more fun. It's a return to new-wave Italo form for chef Daniel Pepperell, too, who keeps one eye on tradition and the other on how to advance it. The Amatriciana is proof of the former: house-made bucatini in a sauce of guanciale and its rendered fat with pecorino, chilli and tomato that's both rich and slippery, in a good way. For the latter, take the trippa alla Romana, melting into the sauce the way it might in a trattoria in Testaccio, but spun in the direction of butter chicken with deft deployment of cream and spice. Sommelier Andy Tyson's wine offer is more natural than at Hubert, but excitement is the through-line, be it from one of many bottles under $100 or back-vintage Barolo from a section labelled "Il Rosso Divino". A crisp cannolo is a cracking finish, but daily changing gelati – mango and sticky rice, perhaps – capture Alberto's in a single scoop: technically astute and bristling with adventure.

Bookings:
Bookings recommended

Chef:
Daniel Pepperell