Valentine’s Day: Fancy a romantic bowl of chocolate spaghetti?
What could be more romantic than a meal out in Soho, a bottle of red wine and a nice bowl of chocolate spaghetti? Well, I can think of a few things…
The ‘spaghetti bucatini’ at 27 Old Compton Street is being sold not as a dessert but a main course: thick strands of pasta slathered with chocolate and mascarpone sauce, stirred through with chilli and topped with fresh basil.
It’s not unusual for chefs to put weird dishes on the menu to give themselves a bit of publicity – gold leaf burgers, oyster flavoured ice cream – but 27 Old Compton Street is a proper restaurant, a rare place to eat late in Soho without a reservation, so I thought I’d give it a try.
The key to this not being completely disgusting is that chocolate is extremely versatile and not inherently sweet, used as an ingredient in savoury dishes including Mexican mole and chilli con carne. So it’s not beyond the realm of possibility that this would be quite nice.
A Valentine’s Day treat?
But as I bring a forkfull of brown pasta to my mouth, I know I have made a mistake. It’s too sweet to be a main course but not sweet enough to be a dessert, instead occupying a troubling liminal space between the two. I am rarely squeamish but there’s something about the combination of earthy chocolate sauce and dense ribbons of pasta that sent flashing signals to my brain to stop eating this, please.
I suspect the unpalatability is neither here nor there – the chocolate bucatini is a way to get couples through the door on Valentine’s Day – and good luck to them. If you avoid the chocolate spaghetti you’ll no doubt have a nice time at 27 Old Compton Street.
Nima Safaei, owner and executive chef, said: “Valentines Day is about going all in. We wanted to create something that makes people smile the moment it arrives at the table, but also tastes incredible. Chocolate bucatini does exactly that.”