Friday, July 31, 2009

Anacapri, an Italian non-adventure

Biggest pie in the world @ Lords

After "that" game at Lords, a few of my compatriots and I wanted to avoid the over priced grub from within the ground (and quite possibly the worlds biggest pies, the one above was half finished and passed liberally amongst that guys friends) and opt for some over priced grub outside the ground.

It was a Monday, I had the rest of the day off and I wanted to tick another of those "destination" eateries off my list. Having anticipated an early finish, I pencilled in a visit to the Anchor and Hope on the Cut. This is somewhere I am ashamed to say I had not yet visited (not for lack of trying on a few occasions). I roped along @shalmaneser, his brother-in-law and his brother-in-law-to-be, the big aussie, and off we went.

My planning skills appear to be a bit pants. Realisation hit me that I should actually check if they are open and sure enough, they are shut on Monday lunchtime. Now, I don't work that well under pressure and we needed to find an alternative destination. Heading to Marylebone, we scrabbled around on Urbanspoon and settled on Anacapri, a neighbourhood Italian eatery with a fair few good write ups.

Anacapri

We got there, it was early afternoon, and I think the staff would rather be putting their feet up and having their own lunch rather than making and serving ours. We were hurriedly shoved our menus, had our drink orders taken and had some pretty unappealing semi-stale bread dumped on our table. I think the staff were miffed by the fact that we would rather chat amongst ourselves than order. We soon got the hint and made our choices.

To start, the old stalwart, Calamari Fritti

Calamari @ Anacapri

I think you can probably guess, I didn't have high hopes for this place, but these were pretty ok. The batter was quite nice and crispy. It was also relatively grease free, no mean achievement. The squid itself was on the chewy side, indicating a few seconds too long in the fryer. And they didn't exactly taste that fresh either. A lot to hope for I suppose.

Mains? Tagliatelle Alfredo please!

Tagliatelle Alfredo @ Anacapri

Tagliatelle in a mushroom and cream sauce, win win. There's not too much you can screw up here, the whole dish was reasonable and I polished the whole lot off (mainly as I was quite hungry). The tagliatelle may well have been fresh too. Made in house? Probably not, Sainsbury's do a highly palatable fresh tagliatelle.

This was very average, inoffensive food. Very much on the pricy side, I guess they have to pay their rent somehow. Its places like this which really highlight why I like to put a bit of research into my dining choices. Put on the spot, I panic. If I had taken a little longer, I would have noticed that I could have eaten at Canteen or Galvin Bistro De Luxe for almost the same amount as I spent at Anacapri. Oh well, you live and learn.

Anacapri, 10 Dorset St, W1U 6QR

Anacapri on Urbanspoon

4 comments:

youngandfoodish said...

Don't you doubt they would use anything other than frozen squid?

jess said...

haha yeah i think frozen is expected in this case

you should definitely submit some of your photos to www.donteatthatyet.com. their goal is to create a visual restaurant review site with a template similar to that of tastespotting.

Anonymous said...

You're too generous. The food was poor and the service was terrible. @shalmaneser

Anonymous said...

I thought the food at this place was delicious! Its a small place but i will deff be going again.