Bricco e Bacco

With a history of butchery behind them and an accompanying restaurant in Palermo, Sicilian steak slingers Bricco e Bacco have gone all in with their Fitzrovia debut. This part of London is packed with good restaurants (The Ninth, Pied a Terre, Bao Fitzrovia, Ampeli and Salt Yard are all a few minutes walk away) but Bricco e Bacco offers something they do not - giant, dry-aged steaks, sizzled on searing hot Himalayan salt blocks.

Steaks aren’t the only thing on the menu but they are front and centre - they literally greet you as you walk in. The interior is very steak house trad - red leather and wood, with bottles of juicy reds sitting in oblong cabinets on the walls. The lighting has been set to ‘moody’.

With Bricco’s heritage firmly in mind it seems appropriate to try a few Sicilian antipasti before the beef comes out. Caponata Siciliana is nicely done, seesawing between sweet and sour, with the crunch of crostini underneath. Chickpea panelle (a type of flatbread) has a real depth of flavour that is surprising and delicious too, but the star is grilled Tuma cheese with chestnut honey, which has all the charm of halloumi and then some (though admittedly at £10 a pop, also has a considerably higher price tag).

Before you grab that steak knife you need to choose your beef, which is handily rated by marbling, softness and flavour. We plumped for a Spanish Rubia Gallega on the bone and it emerged soon after, still sizzling on its salty plinth. All steaks come out of the kitchen rare, and then you cook them to your liking on the salt block - not such a problem if you’re not fussy about your doneness, but some will baulk at having to finish their own steak. Inevitably, some pieces end up more medium-well, but the beefy steak is a delight, as are accompanying roast new potatoes and a gorgeous velvety Sicilian red.

All in all, Bricco e Bacco is a solid steak outing, if not a transcendent experience. If you're looking for supreme-quality steaks and fine wines delivered with exemplary service, you're in safe hands here.

Bricco e Bacco is a family run Sicilian steakhouse in the heart of glamorous Fitzrovia. After many generations of working as butchers in Sicily, Bricco e Bacco opened their first restaurant in Monreale - a small town just outside Palermo. Such is the appetite for steak in London, now they've landed on our shores and brought with them a very specific, Sicilian style of meat cooking that is sure to be a smash hit.

The menu will look fairly familiar to anyone who's visited a trattoria. There's a selection of antipasti, carpaccio and beef tartare, a few salads, and a compact selection of pasta dishes, like saffron spaghetti in bell pepper sauce, ricotta gnocchi in aubergine cream and a classic tagliatelle alla Bolognese. 

The steaks are the real reason to come to Bricco e Bacco, though. As you'd expect from a family with a distinct butchery heritage, beef provenance and aging is first-rate here and carnivores will be drooling over the different steaks on offer. At the time of writing there are eight different beef breeds on the menu, all custom dry-aged for the optimum amount of time. There's Sashi beef from Finland - often called the 'Wagyu of the north' - which has a high degree of fat marbling and makes for a very juicy, tender steak. Chianina Italiana, meanwhile, is very lean and therefore quite different from fattier steaks like Wagyu and Sashi. Every steak is graded out of five for marbling, tenderness and flavour, and listed with wine pairings. 

The results are simple, but effective. All the steaks are cooked on Himalayan rock salt pans to maximise the mineral salinity and emerge from the kitchen still on the bone. If you still have room for something sweet, the dessert menu has some typical Sicilian favourites on there, including cannoli, strawberries in mascarpone cream and cassata Siciliana (a traditional Sicilian cake with candied fruit and ricotta).