Dining Out Digest: Bar Etna, Vesper, Lyaness

All the good shit from the week of 25th May

In a very ‘woman about town who is really busy and important’ turn of events* I am uploading this to Substack on the way to the restaurant that will be the subject of week’s main review, which you’ll be able to read on Sunday. In the meantime, however, I have for you my dispatches from a really fun week: some news about a place with really good pizza, another place with really good cocktails, and a final place that is really hypey and that might be good but I’m not sure (where I did, incidentally, also have a really good cocktail).

*I am neither, I am simply - as we have to describe the more mentally ill of my two family dogs - extremely ‘food-oriented and -motivated’.

Bar Etna

Longtime readers will know that I am very reticent to label anything “the best in London” because doing so is pointlessly buying into a ranking and optimisation culture that I disagree with (WHY do we always have to have the best pizza? What about the pretty good pizza at the cute place with the fit waiter, or at the restaurant round the corner where you go once a week for a bit of comfort? What about Pizza Go Go??? Isn’t there something to be said for fondness and familiarity over pure performance? Why does everything always have to be the best? HUH???). This said: the cheese and tomato pizza at Bar Etna is the best pizza I have ever eaten in a restaurant in London.