“Eataly”:https://www.eataly.co.uk/ is a huge Italian food and drink emporium near Liverpool Street Station. Having shopped there and eaten in the Pasta e Pizza restaurant, a friend and I decided to try the Cucina del Mercarto which literally means ‘kitchen of the market’. The website suggested it was a ‘counter-to-table concept with a menu comprised of ingredients from our fresh counters’ and that it was the perfect place to experience our ethos of ‘we cook what we sell and we sell what we cook’.
As a friend and I had trains which arrived at Liverpool Street, it seemed like the perfect place for a light lunch before a trip to Regents Park Open Air Theatre.
The “menu”:https://www.eataly.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Cucina-del-Mercato-Menu.pdf is relatively simple with lots of Italian-style tapas dishes featuring meats, cheese and fish and a couple of more expensive main courses at around £20. As we’d not seen each other for ages, and were keen to start chatting, we went for an easy to order selection of cold meats and cheeses for £26 and a breadbasket.
The simple wine list had five whites and five reds ranging from £29 to £45, so we thought we might as well opt for prosecco, the same price as the cheapest white.
Bearing in mind, our platter shouldn’t have taken long to prepare, service was a little slow, but possibly it’s because we’d arrived at noon. However, when was served, we were surprised how large the beautifully presented dish was. The very professional waiter told us what each of the three meats and cheese were, which we promptly forgot. However they were all delicious and very different and came with huge green olives, a tasty red onion relish, sun-dried tomatoes and small biscuits. The bread basket contained two huge wedges from a crusty loaf, wonderfully grassy olive oil and pieces of thin music bread.
Our prosecco was manged well for us` and we never had to top up our glasses.
I cannot wait to try it again.
