Food Review: Café Murano Italian feast via Dishpatch is a delicious flavour bomb

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas. The power lines are down, the rivers are flooded, grassy fields are a whirl pit of mud and Covid is encroaching. Forget the stories about Santa and his merry elves – we’re starting to get to the heart of Christmas.

The supply chain crisis means loads of shelves are empty, shopping for loved ones has seldom felt more stressful and while we’re suffering, the people in Number 10 are doing their best to resemble Muppets as they party like it’s 1999. Bliss.

Don’t you just yearn for the bleak days of January 3, when all of the chaos is over?

Amid the dark nights and incessant rain, however, there are diamonds waiting to be found.

The pandemic brought about a new kind of eating – eating at home, straight from a box – and the delivery market has been pretty much captured by Dishpatch.

We’ve reviewed a number of their boxes, and with good reason. Getting the best chefs in the UK knocking out a takeaway that’s delivered by a nice man from DPD makes a change from the issues affecting under-staffed local restaurants that are being squeezed by Brexit, the pandemic and a change in our eating habits.

A Festive Collection is on the virtual shelves of Dishpatch, with menus offering a beef banquet from 10 Greek Street, a Middle Eastern festive feast from Bubala, a seafood soiree from Parsons or a Sri Lankan Celebration from Hoppers.

Frankly, the M&S turkey dinner can wait when there’s food of that quality on offer.

And perhaps that’s the point with box dinners. They’re not a direct threat to the local restaurants we love and continue to support – instead, they take the place of an occasional splurge at the supermarket when Best Of ranges are combined with a glass of something delicious and the oven is dutifully clicked into gear at 180C for 25 minutes.

Café Murano has proved one of the most popular post-pandemic boxes – thanks for your correspondence, dear readers – and so their festive osso buco feast seemed too good an offer to pass up.

At £100 for two, it’s supposed to be the chance to have a restaurant-style blow-out that leaves you groaning from over-indulgence the following morning.

In our case, however, there was so much Italian-inspired food that we enjoyed two sumptuous, back-to-back dinners for two, across successive evenings.

For the uninitiated, Café Murano is one of Angela Hartnett’s Italian restaurants in London. Hartnett is the one-time protégé of Gordon Ramsay who went her own way to create a hugely successful and influential collection of Italian restaurants.

Café Murano offers a modern take on timeless Italian flavours. Hartnett has a passion for good honest food, using the very best ingredients. That philosophy shines through in her Osso Buco Feast. It’s a festive, Italian-inspired offering centred around a rich osso buco with saffron-scented risotto alla Milanese, starting with a selection of antipasti and ending on panettone bread and butter pudding with a pistachio nut custard with chocolate truffles to follow.

Like I say, two days seemed more sensible.

Ordering was as uncomplicated as clicking a mouse – that’s on a PC, not snapping fingers at a tiny mammal in a cornfield – and the box duly arrived on a Friday afternoon.

First up was rosemary focaccia with exceptional olive oil. The bread was warmed through and then dunked in a deliciously fruity oleaginous liquid. Yum. The beauty of eating at home, of course, is that you can deviate from the menu should you wish to do so. And so a good quality, sweet and sticky balsamic was added for good measure.

Mushroom and truffle arancini were a wonderful continuation of dinner. Coated in a crisp breadcrumb, they broke apart to reveal small black flecks of earthy truffle alongside stringy, creamy melted cheese. We ate one each, though I’m sure I could have put away three.

A dish of paprika-infused monkfish carpaccio was served with a fennel, radish and parsley and lemon dressing. Dazzling, in a word. The thin slivers of monkfish were protein-rich and had magnificent texture. The paprika added a gentle heat while the symphony of flavours in the dressing made for magnificent eating. It was pretty much a perfect dish with excellent balance.

Mozzarella with a hazelnut and shallot pesto was the quintessential Hartnett dish. When produce is as good as the ball of fresh, creamy, fall-apart mozzarella, the best thing to do is nothing at all.

And so lightly dressed with a nutty, autumnal pesto was the perfect way to serve. Delicious.

And then came what I like to call autumn on a plate. Roasted squash was served with bitter leaves, gorgonzola and walnuts.

The texture was exceptional while the sweetness of the squash combined with the bitterness of the leaves, the earthiness of the walnuts and the creaminess of the gorgonzola created a match made in heaven. Wonderful. And the funny thing is, that little lot was supposed to be the starter.

Yup, all of those dishes. Fun.

We opted, however, to save the osso buco risotto and dessert for the following day. We were pleased we had.

Osso buco is one of the finest pieces of meat available. A cheap cut that requires slow cooking, it’s packed with far more flavour than the more-expensive, leaner fillets that many opt for. As it cooks, the gelatinous connective tissue and fat breaks down and creates something akin to a flavour bomb.

Served with a tomato-based sauce, it was devastatingly good with meltingly tender chunks of meat set against a fragrant and robust risotto that was buttery and choc-full of parmesan.

Dessert was light and almost mousse-ey, with a beautiful panettone bread and butter pudding served with a luscious pistachio custard. The chocolates were spectacular.

A two-day feast at £100 for two. Bargain. Eat at home seldom tasted so good.

Details

Café Murano

From Dishpatch

www.dishpatch.co.uk/menu