Frankie needs to raise the bar
Of all the unlikely collusions in the hospitality industry, that which brings together a diminutive Italian jockey with a burly Yorkshireman who is a big noise in the restaurant biz must make for one of the most bizarre relationships.
The odd couple in question are Frankie Dettori and Marco Pierre White, who have somehow found common ground and launched this modern, Italian-style bar and very posh trattoria on the site of the former Chez Max.
A scary, well-upholstered man guards the entrance to this basement venue, but he lets me pass without warning me of the awful piped Italian music in the stairwell. Once inside, though, things take a turn for the better.
This glamorous room - part bar, part restaurant - is handsomely accoutred in the style of an ocean liner's cocktail bar, with twinkling glitterballs and mirrored walls.
Frankie's looks every inch a place where people should be whiling away the hours over exciting cocktails. It isn't. A girl behind the bar tells me they're thinking of doing cocktails in the future and that she has just learned how to make a Mojito. I reckon she's also just learned how to tie her shoelaces, so I decline her offer.
Later, some young buck appears and reckons he can make me anything I like. I keep it simple and order a Cosmopolitan, which turned out to be a cosmopolitan interpretation of this classic drink - he didn't use the essential ingredient, Triple Sec.
Happily, prosecco, a fabulous, gently sparkling Italian wine, is available by the glass, so I have several. Moretti and Nastro Azzuro bottled beers are available, and there's a good enough, optimistically priced Italian wine list.
Fellow punters include the usual suspects (for this area) of prosperous fops with Sloaney birds hanging off their arms, but there's a novelty gathering of what look like East End wide boys (although they could well have been black-cab drivers), which adds to the buzzy atmosphere of the place.
On the food front there's a short menu of pizzas, burgers, pasta and steak dishes. Whether or not a burger and chips (£12) or a Frankie's pizza of ham, mozzarella, tomato and rocket (£12.50) represent good value is open to debate, but I left with the content feeling that I'd been to a venue with a sense of occasion about it.
If Dettori and Pierre White ever decide to take this place seriously by introducing a quality cocktail list, I will put this venue at the top of my list of places to revisit. They could have a stunningly good venue on their hands.
Frankies Italian Bar & Grill
Yeomans Row, London, SW3 2AL
