La Partenope, Edinburgh - Restaurants in Edinburgh | s1play.com

La Partenope

Review published on 07/04/2003 © Sunday Herald

La Partenope is precisely the sort of restaurant you hope to find down a backstreet in Italy. It's a little corner of Naples miraculously transported to Scotland.

Waiters are welcoming and charming yet fast. Prices are moderate. The obligatory sultry Monica Bellucci beauty presides over the bar, polishing wine glasses and deftly pouring espressos. All it lacks is a huddle of Vespas parked on the pavement outside. We love this unpretentious Italian package, so it's no surprise to find that La Partenope has plenty of patrons and, consequently, atmosphere. By 6.30pm on a Saturday it was already full.

But here's the best bit. The food is regional Italian, officially Neapolitan, but with a sphere of interest that takes in the Amalfi coast then slips southwards towards Sardinia and further afield. The main menu reads like a book wherein numerous delights beckon. I couldn't take my eyes away from Rosario's Specials (proprietor Rosario Sartore), consisting of around 15 dishes that change on a daily basis reflecting a typical Neapolitan shopping basket.

Naturally seafood is well to the fore with bream, bass, swordfish, prawns and lobster. Cured meat and game from the mountains puts in an appearance while moving south on the flatter coastal plain there's tender buffalo milk mozzarella, Scamorza and Provola cheese.

The wine list features southern Italian wines from little-known producers and there are great bargains to be found in the under £20 price bracket. Our 2001 Primitivo di Manduria from Lecce at £15, with its soft tannins, sour cherry and smoky liquorice flavours, drank beautifully with the complimentary antipasti of lush violet olives and crisp salty-oily flat bread which preceded our pastas - spaghetti alla bottarga and Ziti. Bottarga, the salted and sun-dried roe of tuna fish, is an acquired taste, concentrated and fishy. But then there's no going back.

The spaghetti was served first, a manageable portion, al dente, with sweated garlic and flat parsley in a slick of dark green oil. The waiter grated a chunk of bottarga over the steaming pasta, leaving fine shreds and thicker crumbly cubes. It was exactly how it should be. Ziti, the large, smooth pasta tubes typical of the Naples region, were coated in a rich oily sauce made from fresh tomatoes, garlic, white wine and parsley with a deeper dimension coming from the inclusion of wild mushroom and truffle paste. It was topped with rocket and one huge langoustine. We licked our lips and fingers.

Refreshingly unbureaucratic, you can eat anything here in any order and most dishes can be served either as starters or more substantial primi piatti. Don't you just love that kind of place? Hence our main course carpaccio of cured wild boar sliced diaphanously thin and purple-red venison, with the customary parmesan, lemon and oil garnish. Next a stunning dish of sea bream, two milky-fresh fillets in their silvery skin, anointed with dark-toasted pine nuts and abundant leaves of basil, wilted in a slightly emulsified lemon sauce. It came with a side dish of overcooked vegetables, totally alien to an Italian meal. I assume they are included to keep skinflint value-for-money punters happy. I'd ditch the veg and let them whine.

Desserts are home-made by Rosario's wife. This lady is clearly talented. Her quivering pannacotta coated with strawberry sauce kicked this dessert into an entirely new league for me, while her torta di limone captured the pungent perfume of blowsy-ripe lemons. Our meal finished in a dream-like haze of complimentary chilled limoncello, the preferred aperitivo of the Amalfi area, and home-made fragolino, another fragrant strawberry liquor. Da Rosario, si mangia bene!