Trattoria Brutto
Brutto Ma Buono
I’ve been trying to get a table here since it opened in 2021. On occasions, I’ve set an alarm so I’m on the reservations page at the precise time bookings go live… 9.30 am, 14 days in advance. Despite my ninja-like speed and stealth, it always returns ‘there are no tables available at this time’.
There’s nearly always availability at aperitivo hour or the dancing hour, but my window for dinner is fairly rigidly 7-8.30pm. Walk-ins are welcomed, but that’s not the kind of good times roulette I want to be playing; potentially scrambling around in the vicinity for an available table, at somewhere I didn’t want to eat anyway.
Menu & negroni
A day working in London and desire to be home by 10pm makes a table at 5.45 the perfect opportunity to finally tick it off my list. Within a minute of arrival, we’ve ordered two £5 negronis and with those a toast to the late Russell Norman, founder of Brutto. He’s widely credited for (re)popularising the negroni, when he put it on the menu at Polpo in 2009. That it remains £5, as it was when Brutto opened, is every kind of wonderful and a fitting legacy for the restauranteur’s good cheer and pioneering spirit.
In my mid-20s I spent three years in Tuscany, where practically every large village and town has decades old, family run trattorias serving only flavour forward regional food, with little or no regard for plating finesse. It was exactly this type of trattoria, Russell Norman, had in mind for Brutto.
“There is an Italian expression ‘brutto ma buono’ – ugly but good – and it describes the sort of cooking I’m interested in…In Italy, the places I like to eat are often very simple, homely, family-run restaurants with a traditional menu serving authentic home-cooking... I wanted to create a place like that in London.”
Russell Norman speaking to Maggie Alsop, The Guide
Brutto interior
Norman goes on to say brutto is also about the look and feel of the room, that some might consider ugly. It’s certainly a very precisely imagined space, with dark tones, relieved by walls covered in a jumble of pictures and paintings of all types and sizes. Whilst it feels significantly less grandiose than restaurants in the Big Mamma group, they certainly share a love for pastiche, but here it’s less theme park and marginally closer to the real thing.
Brutto interior
Stylistic touches extend to napkin light shades, paper tablecloths, candles in wicker chianti flasks and ugly or not (in my eyes), the half empty room is still bristling with energy, driven by the classy soundtrack that’s louder than in most restaurants. It’s worth looking up A New Project, Russell Norman on Spotify to get the feel.
Lezér Rosso Vigneti delle Dolomiti IGT 2025 (BIO) Elisabetta Foradori, Trentino
Then there’s the somewhat seasonally-driven menu, in typewriter font, with the classic trattoria breakdown of antipasti, primi / pastas, contorni, secondi and dolci. The all-Italian wine list is on point too and whilst pricing seems random (so proceed with caution), our Lezér Rosso Vigneti delle Dolomiti IGT 2025 by Elisabetta Foradori, in Trentino, is a biodynamic, lightweight beauty. Served lightly chilled, it’s the lesser spotted teroldego grape, bursting plummy fruits and hedgerow, with a lovely mouth feel and elegant finish.
Crostini fegatini di pollo / Chicken liver pate
Three crostini fegatini di pollo—bruschetta with chicken liver pâté—are bursting with rusticity and authenticity; mildly tart, sweet, full of umami and richness on top of crunchy toasted bread.
Seven mid-quality anchovy fillets, come with curls of butter and a slice of toasted sourdough bread from near neighbour St. John. But when fresh bread’s that good, I don’t understand toasting it, not least making it less useful as a sauce mopping tool.
Tagliolini con asparagi /Tagliolini with asparagus
The freshly made pasta—tagliolini con asparagi—glistening with egg yolk, like a carbonara with thin strips of asparagus spears, is executed perfectly and arriving with a bowl of grated Parmesan is a well-judged touch for the fantasy being spun.
Ribollita
My biggest ‘problem’ choosing from this menu is a lot of dishes are part of my home cooking repertoire. Across the table, there’s ribollita, one of my hearty autumn / winter / stew / soup staples that I’m not remotely interested in tasting, at least not with the temperature nudging 22°c today.
Rosbif con patate / Roast beef with potatoes
I’ve eaten most of these dishes, multiple times ‘in situ’, and whilst my rosbif is served bang on, seductively rare, the accompanying roast potatoes—evenly, golden roasted—are good, but not as good as they could be, or at least as I expected them to be. In every memory of this dish, those potatoes would’ve been basted under the meat fats and juices before being blasted for crunch.
Antipasti, primo & contorno
My planned side of tomato salad—three halves of tomato, drizzled in EVOO with fresh basil—are not seasonally peak and best in class, as a dish this simple really needs to be. It was perplexedly brought with the antipasti, that was also brought at the same time as the pasta. We half joked we’d been punished for having taken three return visits of the waiter before being ready to place our order. Service is ‘friendly’ enough, but whether the waiting staff are incentivised to turn the tables as quickly as possible or not, we shouldn’t be made to believe that’s the case.
Tiramisù
The tiramisù though is a triumph and one of the best I’ve eaten in the UK and certainly every bit as good as the best I’ve eaten in Italy. Under a hefty dusting of cocoa powder is a generous mound of joy, with judicious quantities of coffee and booze and savoiardi still at the precise point of just holding their form, amongst the folded layers of creamy, lightly-whipped sweet-eggy mascarpone. We’ve smashed it within a minute of it landing on the table.
The bill of £220.50 (Food £98.50 / Drinks £80 / Service Charge £22) between two is a lot more than in any Tuscan trattoria, but it’s fairly reasonable for London.
The food is largely flavour forward and in the home-cooking style Norman wished to champion here, so it’s arguably churlish to say it’s too much like my cooking at home. But, where Brutto really loses is far too often in the detail and that’s what he excelled in.
It would seem, without Norman at the helm, the delivery of his vision is being slowly diluted… the same happened at Polpo, albeit at a significantly faster rate.
WORTH A TRY
35-37 Greenhill Rents, London EC1M 6BN
22/04/26
