River Cafe London

January 15, 2018
This celebration of the 30th anniversary of London’s lauded Italian restaurant is more victory lap than fresh offering. Much has changed since Rogers and Gray met at a McDonald’s in March 1987 to talk about opening a restaurant called the River Cafe in a reclaimed warehouse space. What was initially a sandwich shop eventually transformed into a Michelin-starred success. Cofounder Gray died in 2010, and since then the restaurant’s signature simple style (many recipes have five or fewer ingredients) have not changed and now feel commonplace. That said, the authors include many delightful and trusted recipes, among them chickpea-flour farinata, pappa al pomodoro, nettle risotto with taleggio, sea bass baked in salt, veal shins with sage cooked in Barolo wine, and zucchini alla scapece. Instructions are sparse and recipes free of headnotes, so the reader has little clue what to do if Castelluccio lentils aren’t available, or why to choose one chocolate cake over another. Chef April Bloomfield contributes a perfunctory introduction. Photographs and whimsically decorated menus by artists who are members of the “extended family,” including a polka-dotted spread by Damien Hirst, are fun. Ultimately, however, the 30 new recipes included here do little to justify the cover price for what feels like little more than a reprint of previous recipes.