Fucina (Restaurant)

Top 10 things to know about Fucina:

1) Brunch is beautiful. Whatever your tastes, brunch is best enjoyed with friends or family and full of flavour. Fucina Italian restaurant just off Baker Street is Italian brunch heaven.

2) It’s 12pm on a pyjama-clad Saturday afternoon, you’re avoiding the washing, and bloody hungry. You remember that your friends have asked you to meet at this new Italian place and now you’re scrambling. You’re coffee-less but you’ll survive.

3) You arrive in a calm oasis. Music bubbles over the speaker and the usher takes your coat with a quiet yet attentive tone that is so efficient you’ll forget you even had a coat. The exposed brick, stylishly simple décor makes you think of a modern Italian ristorante.

4) Your friends are sat next to the glass tiled wall that allows the revitalising sunlight to shine in and you rush over, apologising. Sitting down you notice that nobody at Fucina knows what it means to rush. Observant, helpful staff move noiselessly. This has an effect on the patrons who have started their Saturday on the right foot.

5) You spy the usual brunch menu offerings of granola and carbs. Glorious, life-affirming carbs. You order a jasmine tea and a couple of pizzas for the table to start before picking your lobster linguine main and a glass of orange juice.

6) Pizzas arrive mid-chat and everyone dives in. The Fichi pizza – sausage, fig, broccoli, scamorza – is flawless in taste, relying on its simple, balanced flavours to speak for themselves. The Porchetta and Classica pizzas do just the same.

7) The modest sounding lobster linguine is the best brunch dish you’ve ever had. The tomato sauce is glossy and sings an aria to the tender lobster flesh nestled amongst pasta strands that fill you with life in every single bite. You moan aloud. You can’t help it. The uncomplicatedness of the dish is like life itself in your mouth.

8) Main sadly finished, you slurp drinks and eye the Bomboloni. You decide to order a custard cream version with a cup of coffee.

9) With the taste of authentic coffee in your mouth, you bite into this Italian doughnut and know that this is it! Italian Bomboloni should be on every menu.

10) You pay the bill, grab your coat, say goodbye and leave Fucina feeling alive. Brunch has given you a new lease on life and everything is good....read more