Amico Bio Holborn

This is the younger sister of the original Amico Bio near St Pauls. It serves vegetarian Italian food, with ingredients imported from the family farm in Capua in the south of Italy.  Arancini were pleasant, with a crisp outside coating and well seasoned, though there were very few peas amongst the rice (12/20). These were served in an impractical little bowl in which the trio of rice balls barely fitted, so if you tried to cut one open the others would be pushed out of the bowl. Tagliatelle with artichokes had reasonable pasta, but the artichokes were surprisingly tasteless and in some cases rather stringy; here the seasoning seemed overly restrained (11/20).

Chocolate apple crumble was an odd idea, and so it proved. The apples were rather undercooked, topped with an overly fine crumble that seemed more dust that crumble, with cheap-tasting chocolate and a coating of icing sugar. This was not pleasant (8/20).

The two waitresses were pleasant enough, though one spoke only limited English. The bill was £15 for lunch with just tap water to drink, effectively for two courses, as they did not charge for the barely eaten crumble. There was a set lunch men for £10 available too.  Of course at dinner with wine the bill would be higher. This was a bit disappointing after my more successful visit to the original Amico Bio; perhaps they are spreading themselves a little too thinly with this new branch.