Of sweet starters and savoury ice-cream

I've been to Bocca a few times now and it has never let me down. The prices are reasonable, the food is excellent. It's the kind of neighbourhood Italian everyone should have.

I returned there last night and had a more unusual meal than most. It started with fritto misto. This translates as "mixed fried things" and is a popular Italian dish which can take many guises - often fish and seafood based. On this occasion it was deep-fried courgette flower, stuffed olives, rice balls, and custard cream. The custard cream bit sounded so bizarre that I didn't really think about - but there on the plate was some deep-fried cubes of what looked like cheese and tasted like custard cream. Later research revealed that this is indeed what they do in parts of Italy (such as Bologna), sometimes as part of a fritto misto or as an accompaniment to meat. It is a very thick custard, cooled until it sets and then deep-fried. It was by no means unpleasant, if a little strange as a starter. The rest of it was fairly straightforward, but tasty. There was a theme of soft, oozing even, fillings contrasting with a crispy exterior. The rice balls (arancini) had a melting cube of mozzarella buried within. The olives were stuffed with sausagemeat or mozzarella.

 We also shared bruschetta topped with tomato, which were much more conventional, if perfectly tasty.

My adventurousness eased for a bit as I opted for my usual main, a Mediterranean vegetable pizza. The pizzas at Bocca are huge, with impressively thin bases and generous toppings. My companion had one of their home-made pastas, an unusual dish of ravioli with beetroot filling, served with butter and poppy-seed sauce. It was pleasant, but I couldn't help thinking that beetroot is perhaps not strongly-flavoured enough to carry a ravioli filling.

We didn't strictly need a pudding by this point, but Bocca do delicious home-made ice-creams, with a changing selection. On this occasion there was a black truffle and honey ice-cream which begged to be tried. That's truffle as in fungus, not as in chocolate. At first I didn't get much flavour at all, but then a subtle muskiness came through. A bit like the beetroot ravioli, I had no regrets at having tried it, but it won't become my new favourite. I tried the strawberry yoghurt ice-cream too, which was pleasant enough, but to my mind nowhere near as good as their strawberry ice-cream, which is like eating the essence of the fruit itself.

My dining companion had a chocolate and almond cake, served slightly warm. It was nothing like what I had expected: layers of feather-light sponge interleaved with chocolate mousse. She didn't manage to finish it, but swore that was no reflection on its quality.

This was my fifth or sixth visit to Bocca in the space of four months, and none of them have let me down. It doesn't normally feel as adventurous as last night's visit. A  dessert of Sicilian cannoli, deep-fried pastry tubes filled with sweetened ricotta and candied fruit, was probably the most unusual thing I have eaten previously. But I will definitely be returning to find out what's on the menu next time.

Bocca
14 High Parade,
Streatham High Road,
SW16 1EX

0208 677 3646
www.boccarestaurant.co.uk

Updated: The best ice-cream in London, part two

The second half of my round-up of my favourite places for great ice-cream. Quick, while the weather's still nice!

I've updated this after a weekend of October sunshine and more ice-cream eating opportunities.

Nardulli
29 The Pavement
Clapham Common
SW4 0JE

Should  I admit that I went to this place twice in one day? Well, it was an astonishingly hot October day - that's my justification anyway.
There are so many flavours at Nardulli that it's hard to choose, including some unusual varieties. Using all my willpower I managed to bypass my usual favourites of hazelnut and strawberry in favour of something different. So I tried the cardamom, whose elegant, slightly sweet flavour goes remarkably well with ice-cream. It's fairly subtle, not overpowering as I had feared. I can also recommend cinnamon, which reminded me of a warm oven full of biscuits and cake mixture - unexpected associations in an ice-cream, but downright delicious. The fig flavour, like the black cherry, is a swirl of fruitiness mixed with vanilla ice-cream. The black cherry variety contains pieces of fruit, while the fig is a reduced, sticky (almost syrupy) burst of fruit against the creamy background.
Other flavours include macadamia (nice, but I think I'll be sticking with hazelnut in future) passionfruit (bright yellow, beautifully intense), caramel, bacio (hazelnut and chocolate), Nutella (not sure how this differs from the last one), tiramisu, lemon, coconut, amaretto, pistachio, fior di latte, chocolate orange...
Expect queues on sunny weekends.

Ice-cream from Nardulli, In case you were wondering, that's cardamom on the left, fig on the right, plus some macadamia mostly buried underneath.

Lab G

6 Granville Arcade  

Coldharbour Lane

Brixton SW9 8PR

 

Proper Italian gelato is the order of the day at this tiny ice-cream parlour in Brixton Village.

We trued the chocolate sorbet and the hazelnut ice-cream – both very, very good. Chocolate sorbet is a winner to my mind, because I love dark chocolate and find that often chocolate ice-cream is too creamy and just not chocolate-y enough. With this chocolate sorbet, the pure chocolate flavour sang through with no creaminess to get in the way.

As you may have noted, I also tried the hazelnut ice-cream at Gelupo, and I would say they were equally good.  

Other flavours include stracciatella, proper vanilla (with tiny flecks of seeds), cherry and salted caramel.

Bocca

14 The High Parade

Streatham High Road

London SW16 1EX 

This is my local Italian restaurant, but their home-made ice-cream is really very good. They do a very good hazelnut (are you spotting a theme here?) but actually the Bacio (kisses) variety, with chocolate and hazelnut, might be even better. I also love the very fruity, soft strawberry ice-cream. I didn’t actually have high hopes for the blueberry sorbet (blueberries are pleasant enough but to my mind don't have the strength of flavour you want in an ice-cream or sorbet) but it was much better than I expected – they had obviously used lots of fruit.
You can have it at the end of your meal – a single scoop is £1.60 and is quite a generous size, making for a very cheap dessert – or get a cone or a cup to take away.

Read part one here.

The best ice-cream in London

One of the delights of moving to London has been the ready availability of ridiculously good ice-cream.

In my former home of Norwich you could buy decent, locally-made ice-cream in tubs to take home, but there weren't really any ice-cream cafes, and if you were buying ice-cream by the scoop it would usually be mass-produced stuff that you could buy anywhere in the country.

In London there is fancy ice-cream aplenty. I think breast milk ice-cream (allegedly available from Icecreamists in Covent Garden, but more of a publicity stunt than something you can actually buy) may be a bridge too far, but I thrill at the thought of grapefruit or tramontana flavours.

We are promised warmer weather for this weekend, so I might indulge myself while ice-cream still seems reasonably in keeping with the season.

These are my favourites so far:

Gelupo, 7 Archer Street, Soho

Unusual flavours as well as the classics, and a selection that changes regularly. Their hazelnut, made with lightly roasted nuts from Piedmonte, is one of my favourites. So is the chocolate ice-cream with chilli and cinnamon. It has quite a kick, actually - I adore its intensity, though I couldn't eat too much of it.
Compared with those the ricotta and sour cherry ice-cream was a bit of a wallflower. But if you like more subtle flavours it could be the one for you.
Did I mention the raspberry and clementine sorbets? Both were beautifully smooth and full of fruit, though the raspberry is the one that sticks in my mind - the flavour seemed to explode on my tongue on the first taste.

It's worth checking out the upright freezer (past the ice-cream dispensary on the left) before making a purchase, as this contains goodies like ice-cream bonbons (a surprise flavour, dipped in chocolate) and chocolate cones ready-filled with ice-cream.
Gelupo stays open late if you fancy an ice-cream to round off your evening.

Oddono,14 Bute Street, South Kensington

This was the first of the top-class London ice-cream parlours I visited. My friend and I both ordered an ice-cream, ate them with wonder, and then immediately ordered another one each. We were almost unable to stop giggling as we left - call it an ice-cream high, if you like.
They do smooth Italian gelato in an array of flavours - luckily you can have some samples to help you choose. This was the first place I ever hard hazelnut ice-cream, and I have been in love with it ever since. Their chocolate ice-cream is unusually intense, made with Valrhona chocolate, and I can also recommend the strawberry.

More ice-cream parlour recommendations to follow soon...