Polpo – Sohopeful, So Good

Polpo - 41 Beak Street - London W1F 9SB - Website - Map - Reservations are taken for lunch: +44 (0)20 7734 4479 - Cicchetti & Crostini £1-2, Bread Dishes ~£4, Meats Dishes £5-11, Fish Dishes £5-7, Cheese ~£4, Vegetables & Salads £3-4, Desserts £2-5 - For the full set of photos, please visit my Flickr account (Meal 1, Meal 2) - A Venetian bacaro meets Lower East Side...

Italian Tapas At Polpo

Last night I took one of my oldest gal pals out to dinner to hear about a crazy trip to Ibiza over a lovely bottle of Montepulciano and cicheti (sharing plates of Italian tapas) at Polpo.Polpo has just opened on Beak Street, and is the brainchild of Russell Norman, who used to work as operations director for Caprice Holdings, looking after top London restaurants like The Ivy, J Sheekey...

Polpo : Yet another, next big thing.

If you’ve been keeping your finger on the pulse of the London foodie scene, you’ll be aware of the carnival that followed the recent opening of this latest Italian venture to hit Soho. It has been a couple of months since it’s opening and it is ever so busy. They do no take evening bookings, and my first visit was a non starter that resulted in a return visit to Koba. That was...

A brilliant Italian bacaro in London's Soho, Polpo, looks set to swim rather than sink

The last time I was in Venice I got drunk on a bottle of amaretto while sitting on the edge of St Mark's Square. The most remarkable thing about this sentence is that, despite the liquor in question – liquid marzipan for meths drinkers – I appear still to recall the incident though, to be honest, only in the way car crash victims recall the initial skid and the shudder. I was 18 years...

Polpo, the hip new Italian tapas restaurant, has a lively atmosphere and offers rare value for Soho.

I used to think that by my fourth decade the young would seek out my wise counsel. "Please, Prof, can you explain to us mortals the categorical imperative, or the controversy of Wittgenstein's poker?" But rather than a philosophy don I'm a restaurant critic, so instead of weighty questions, I'm asked light ones about my weight. "Why aren't you fat?" people demand, with the same indignation...

Cosy place, albeit on the dark side...

Went here for one of the preview night and had an awesome time. Seems that reviews lately point to Polpo being victim of highly exaggerated expectations though.

Those reviews aside, I still think this is an absolutely beautiful little place, and well worth going to for some quick nibbles to eat tended to by the friendly staff. Then again, I think I need to go a second time to see how my first excellent experience holds up.

London Restaurant Reviews - Polpo

Polpo - I thought there would be nothing else to add to the media frenzy surrounding “Polpo”, the new Italian darling and makers of cicheti or small-eats, or tapas or whatever-you-wanna-call-it in Soho. It’s been blogged and highly praised by just about every food blogger in London – but after my disappointing meal there last Saturday, I thought I would put pen...

Can woman live by bread alone? Yes, when it’s the basis of tapas this good, says Zoe Williams.

Restaurateur lore has it that when you eschew reservations, in favour of diners who just walk in and take their chances, this rewards your locals, your regulars, the people who make your restaurant great. Maybe that’s true, but Polpo hasn’t been open long enough to tell; at the moment fortune favours the flexible, the easy-going, the people who don’t mind waiting an hour for a table. It...

Polpo, London

Polpo is the bustling, new Venetian bacaro bar in the heart of Soho. - The Greedy Diva perched herself up at the bar and knew she was in for a good night when the lovely bacaro man recommended the Barbera from Piedmont, Greedy Diva's food and vino holiday nirvana. Wines come by the glass, carafe or bottle - half a litre arrived in a quirky, old school crockery jug, bringing an instant...

Polpo in Soho - preview night

Exterior of Polpo. Behind this pink facade you find one of the cosiest Venetian bacaros in London. Originally uploaded by Manne.C, one of my lovely colleagues at Livebookings, invited me and W over for dinner at his home a few weeks ago. Then he emailed me a change of plan: no home dinner, instead we would go to some place in Soho called Polpo. - I googled it, and it turned out it...

This used to be a nice place run by the manager from Assaggi. Now, it’s an Italian tapas bar a la New York

There’s an ad on television for some sort of neurotic, trigger-happy, squirty surface-wipe stuff. There’s a gaudy graphic showing the effluvia of toxic gunk that’s left behind by a dead chicken. Some child comes along and puts his hand or his sandwich in it, I can’t remember.

Then his careful, kind, intelligent and successful mother (you can tell, because she’s pretty and smiling) sprays...

Giles Coren reviews Polpo

After a very successful first few weeks, which no doubt persuaded the management that the added anguish of running an overburdened reservations system was unnecessary, Polpo, a small Italian restaurant (or Venetian bacaro, if you please) in Central London, decided to stop taking bookings altogether.

“We decided that we’ve done our bit, opening a restaurant that people like,” said the chap...

When one Italian 'tapas bar' goes under, can it possibly make any sense to open another in the same spot?

What's the secret of a successful restaurant? Is there a code it's possible to crack or is it completely unpredictable? As someone who has been reviewing restaurants for seven years, I'm tempted to say that no one knows anything. That's the same conclusion William Goldman came to in Adventures in the Screen Trade, his celebrated book about Hollywood. Like the film industry, the restaurant...