Restaurant Review Casa Malevo Connaught Village

Casa Malevo (Image: Archant)

Walk amid the bubbling shish pipes of Edgware Road, past the exclusive Georgian grandeur of Connaught Square and you arrive at a quiet corner of W2.

Also named after the Earl who once had a house here, Connaught Village is home to a row of independent shops and restaurants such as the intimate and homely Casa Malevo.

Here, new head chef Jose Cacciavillani has taken the menu up several notches of refinement fusing his native Argentinian cuisine with techniques and flavours from the Med and Asia.

Traditional dishes like pressed pinapple and pork get a complimentary injection of flavour - a Korean tinged sauce that explodes a sweet and sour bomb in your mouth.

The famously carnivorous diet has even embraced vegan options, although the meltingly-soft impeccably cooked prime fillet here made us realise that giving up meat wasn't a durable option.

Cacciavillani, who started cooking aged eight at his mother's knee, has worked with the Roca brothers and Pratap Chahal and the refinement of dazzling dishes such as fatty veal sweetbreads cut with lemon oil and cucumber, or the chickpea crumble that dusted a perfect duo of chcolate desserts or the genius black olive cracker that accompanied a sous vide octopus with a smooth sauce vierge and chargrilled prawn owe something to their inventive attention to detail.

Elsewhere a chewy provolone was drizzled with wild garlic oil and topped with walnuts, sesame crackers and a maple sauce, hake came with an escabeche, and that gorgeous fillet with a deeply flavoured red chimichurri dip.

All this and knowledgable attentive service, a relaxed vibe and mean cocktails of the mojito or campari variety - mine was a pisco sour that truly lived up to its name. There's also a good wine list with approachable wines by the carafe.

The Earl of Connaught would have approved.

23 Connaught St, St George's Fields, casamalevo.com