[Lifestyle] Tutto, Brighton: ‘There are chefs here who can’t cook pasta’ – restaurant review

[BirSaNN]

If Britain is on the brink of ruin, then Saturday-night Brighton hasn’t yet got the memo. The queues at Wagamama and Bill’s snake out of their doors, and there are revellers everywhere, revelling. There is not a seat to be had at the mid-price, group-friendly likes of Côte, Browns and Ask. No, these restaurants don’t have the cool factor that small independents do, but there’s a sense that these big beasts will weather the winter freeze to come. Cool, on the other hand, is a fickle and expensive thing to pull off – one of the coolest restaurants I know just put a small plate of jerusalem artichokes up to £19.50, which feels like a lot.

Increasingly, when booking a table for a group, the focus is firmly on the cheap and cheerful; somewhere with large tables, tolerable house white and food that fills you up. Into this testy landscape comes Tutto, a capacious, partially art-deco Euro-brasserie serving a menu they describe as “Italian food memories – ours and yours”. More accurately, they serve small portions of pappardelle at £14 a bowl or a chunk of sea bass on some sloppy shallots for £22, while a side of roast new potatoes comes in at a fiver. They don’t make pizzas, but they will do you a salumi board featuring finocchiona, coppa, speck and pickled fennel for £12. If this all feels a tad expensive, well, alas, such is the lie of the land these days: that very cool jerusalem artichoke place I mentioned earlier charges 23 smackers for its potato ravioli. Things are wild out there.

Meanwhile, at the slightly more pocket-friendly Tutto, the lasagne “crocchetta” – two large lumps of breaded, deep-fried lasagne – cost a doable £7. But here’s the thing: somewhere in the hasty mass-frying of this lasagne, all the joy of oozing cheese or soothing bechamel or rich beef is lost, leaving you with sturdy slabs of breaded pasta sheets. They’ll line your stomach, but little else.

Tutto is terribly lit, too; it is neither romantically twinkly nor usefully bright. They’ve spent a lot on art and the right paint, but the lighting makes it – and, by default, you – drab. Still, the staff are bright and friendly, and the bar can pull off a cold, well-balanced boulevardier, which you certainly won’t get at Pizza Express. The acoustics in the back room are also awful: when a table of 10 sat down next to us, the noise was so bad, I started having to communicate with Charles via WhatsApp.

 

link: https://www.theguardian.com/food/2022/nov/11/tutto-brighton-grace-dent-chefs-here-cant-cook-pasta-restaurant-review