Limoncello
169-171 Mitcham road, tooting, London SW17 9PG

Reviewed Saturday 4 April 2009 lunch time.

View to the street from our table

I do not know this part of London well, but as I was looking for a vacuum cleaner spare part during lunch time, I discovered this restaurant. It was a great, totally unexpected discovery! The restaurant is fairly big and I liked the space between the tables. The windows were open to the street which was welcome for this great sunny day. Finally some decent spring weather.  

Drinks: they have a nice choice of drinks: white wines, red wines, rose wines, sparkling wines, champagne, aperitifs, brandies, dessert wine, beer…
The price range for their red wine goes from £10.90 (the bottle of their house red) to £29.90 (Amarone Doc). A Chianti DOCG costs £15.90 for example. We chose the Cannonau Di Sardegna DOC 14%  ( £19.50) described as “This wine has a vinous bouquet with a dry full bodied. And persistent taste. Excellent Sardinian wine”. Well, we agree with their description and it was a very good accompanient to both the pizzas and the desserts. It was nice to have a waiter who knew enough to check the cork after opening the bottle and to provide the right type of wine glasses for the wine we’d chosen. Most do not bother and it is sad.

They have all kind of meals (antipasti, secondi, paste…) but we went for the pizzas
The price range for the pizza goes from £5.90 (the Margherita with tomato, mozzarella and basil) to £8.50 (the Limoncello, made of tomato, mozzarella, pancetta, mushrooms and chicken). All pizzas are sprinkled with oregano and parmesan.
We chose the Calzone which is a folded pizza with tomato, mozzarella, mushrooms, ham and salami (£7.90) and the Pavarotti made of tomato, mozzarella, parma ham, rucola and shaved parmesan  (£8.20). Both were quite large and excellent. The Calzone was nice and light, reasonably crispy. It could perhaps have just a little more tomato sauce and I would encourage the chef to be a little braver and singe the edges. Compared to the Rustica’s Calzone, this one is better with the filling better blended and the base crispier so so far this is the best Calzone I have met in the UK . The Pavarotti was good too, with a crispy base and everything as it should be. No pizza is complete without chilli oil and Limoncello’s chilli oil was excellent (very fresh and spicy with a touch of garlic). My only complaint is that the waiter pourred the chilli oil on our pizzas whereas I would have prefered to control the quantity myself (I would have had more!).

Pizza Pavarotti

The two pizzas

For desserts, we had an almond panna cotta and a cup of coffee ice cream with Sambuca. The panna cotta was good, not too sweet and much less heavy than many panna cotta. The coffee ice cream with Sambuca was great, with a very nice coffee flavour and the liquor was not overpowering. We also had two coffee espresso which were good, slightly burnt.

Panna cotta

Coffee ice cream with Sambuca

Cost and conclusion: for £47.50 (with service to add) the value for money was good. The service was efficient and the owner was nice too, asking us for some feedback about the colours of the rooms that are going to be updated. We will be back!