La Vela

Eighteen euros for cold beef and an apology. The four-word menu description was the most generous thing about it.

The review

Everything La Vela does well, it does with fish. The Sicilian kitchen, the light off the marina, the owner working the room herself — all of it is charming, and none of it reaches the beef tartare. The menu's description runs to four words, 'fillet beef tartar', and the plate honours that indifference exactly. What arrives is a mound of chopped fillet and essentially nothing else: no acid, no allium bite, no pickle, no crunch, seasoning so timid you start hunting for the salt yourself. Worse, it came barely cool, and raw beef that isn't properly cold turns soft and dull in the mouth almost immediately. Tartare is a dish of contrasts; this one had a single note and no idea that fourteen others were missing. Eighteen euros buys a lot of very good crudo di pesce here, which is what I should have ordered and what you should order. A kitchen this capable shouldn't sell a dish it so plainly has no interest in.

Back to the full ranking