EATING OUT

With all the retro allure of Sophia Loren, a bold new Italian in West London is a siren call for Tom

You don’t so much walk into Jacuzzi as slip into its kitsch, bejewelled embrace. One moment you’re on grey, glum Kensington High Street, the next, playing a bit part in some crazed Dolce & Gabbana fever dream – like stepping from monochrome into Technicolor, from Kansas into Oz. Because this is no mere restaurant, rather the love child of Silvio Berlusconi and Sophia Loren, a place where Pasolini meets Pizza Express.

There are four epic floors of lush foliage, glittering chandeliers, fig trees (complete with twinkling fairy lights) and walls covered with both wooden trellis and framed swimwear.

Floors are extravagantly tiled, jazz (the sort that soundtracks the sleazier end of the B-movie market) purrs from a hundred hidden speakers while banquettes are upholstered in fabric the colour of lust. The lighting, as you’d imagine, is not so much soft as downright crepuscular.

Of course, one doesn’t expect purse-lipped minimalism and plain white walls from Big Mamma group, the team behind the gloriously OTT Gloria and Ave Mario. The menu may still groan with leering puns (‘Happy Endive’ salad, ‘Nice Pear’

Pizza is excellent, all charred crust and molten pools of mozzarella

pudding); truffle pasta is served in a hollowed-out pecorino wheel, and you can add, for a hefty supplement, caviar. If you’re that way inclined. But cut through the high camp and there’s quality to be found.

Like excellent culatello di Zibello, cut tissue-paper thin, gently, sweetly piggy. And a decent red prawn crudo, the crustaceans thrustingly fresh, although the sauce, with its mozzarella milk and bisque reduction, is a baroque flourish too far. There’s a vast T-bone Fiorentina steak, enough to feed four, with depth and chew, while pizza is excellent, all charred, fluffy cornichone, molten pools of mozzarella and a sharp homemade tomato sauce. I’d happily come back for this alone.

So yes, the food is decent here, often very good indeed. Service too, the front of house managing to revel in the madness without ever being overwhelmed by it. But that’s only half the point. Because Jacuzzi is as seductive as it is silly, a tonic, an escape, a con piacere pick-me-up. The prudes and purists may disapprove. But we had a blast. This is one Jacuzzi you’ll definitely want to share.

About £40 per head. Jacuzzi, 94 Kensington High Street, london w8; bigmammagroup.com