But I have a horrible feeling that if I did, the waiter would hand the wine list to me. Maybe not with Ms Robinson, whose face is well known from television. With the others, or with one of the numerous female winemakers whose wines you probably drink regularly without knowing the sex of the person behind the bottle, it's almost a dead cert. At the level of the everyday consumer, there are two sides to this story. I've never been out to dinner with Jancis Robinson, Susy Atkins, Joanna Simon, Jane MacQuitty, Kitty Johnson, Susie Barrie, Sarah Jane Evans, or any of this country's other distinguished female wine writers.
The place does a roaring trade in crusty pizzas, good pasta, and serious mains such as scottaditto lamb chops with thyme.Locanda Locatelli, 8 Seymour Street, London W1, tel: 020 7935 9088 Giorgio and Plaxy Locatelli's classy, savvy restaurant is my favourite Italian in Britain. Try the tagliatelle with goat ragu, truffled risotto and brilliant Italian salumi. If you can have a glamorous family restaurant, this is it.Ramsons, 18 Market Place, Ramsbottom, Lancashire, tel: 01706 825 070 Chris Johnson's cosy, personal restaurant attracts local Italophiles for dishes like wild sorrel and goat cheese risotto and rib eye of Bowland beef with pioppini mushroom sauce.. That's fine, but something more may need to be done before it ends up as one of the coldest.Lunch Mon-Fri; dinner Mon-Sat. Around £140 for two, including wine and service.12/20 Sartoria, 20 Savile Row, London W1, tel: 020 7534 7000Scores 1-9 stay home and cook 10-11 needs help 12 OK 13 pleasant enough 14 good 15 very good 16 capable of greatness 17 special, can? wait to go back 18 highly honourable 19 unique and memorable 20 as good as it getsSecond helpings: Hot Italian restaurantsCentotre, 103 George Street, Edinburgh, tel: 0131 225 1550 This casual and buzzy bar/caf?as established in 2004 by Victor and Carina Contini. I have to like any chef who can cook shellfish as delicately as this.
To finish, the delizia di Sorrento (£6.50) is a bright-tasting, lemon-scented pudding.So why do I find the whole place mildly annoying? There is little that is "simpatico" about Sartoria except for the cooking, and that would have to be even better than it is to transcend the flawed service and lack of food knowledge. The atmosphere is sterile, the piano playing from the bar anachronistic, and the little power struggles between the staff become obvious over the course of the evening. The sommelier loses me completely at the end of the night when he responds to a request for two glasses of wine with the most expensive available, costing a heavy-handed £13.50 each.Clearly positioned as one of the more corporate, conservative members of the Conran restaurant group, Sartoria is never going to be the hottest place in town. It is at once light, herby, and garlicky, a dish cleverly left to its own devices. Wary of Dutch veal, I am reassured to hear that it has come all the way from Colchester.Similar simplicity shows in a dish of saut? mussels and clams (£14.50) that is just that - a pile of mussels and clams in their shells sitting in lightly winey juices with some grilled bread for mopping-up purposes. It's no beauty, plonked on the plate from the pan, but the combination of light, fresh tomato-y juices, chunks of sea-sweet red mullet and nicely elastic, good-natured pasta does the trick.Head sommelier Pugliese is not present, and I have to struggle a little with my wine waiter to get him under the £70 mark. Eventually we settle on a supple, spicy Germano Ettore Barbera d'Alba 2003 for £41.The new chef has swapped the breaded veal fillet for a cutlet, and the costoletta (£21.50) certainly benefits from being cooked on the bone.
