If you’re old enough, you’ll remember the stumbling early days of Italian food in Britain: shiny spaghetti came in dark blue greaseproof paper packets, parmesan came ready-grated in a tube and for olive oil, you went to the chemist. Elizabeth David’s gospel lit the fire, but it wasn’t until The River Cafe, and owners Rose and Ruth’s protégé Jamie Oliver, that good Italian food swept the nation. Good pasta and more is no rarity now, but it’s all too often wrapped up in a cold clingfilm of one-upmanship and the sort of ambitious pretension that the British sometimes go in for; the jocularity and whimsy of the Italian way is lost.
An osteria in Alfriston
Poco, part wine shop, part restaurant and a local legend for its bottomless Sunday lunch (salt marsh lamb and porchetta) is nestled in Alfriston, the Venice of the East Sussex downs, and it’s like a taste of real Italy. The building is a former 15th-century dwelling where medieval farmers lived with their livestock. More recently, it was a cookware shop. For the last two years, its timber beams and wooden floors have played host to Poco, a haven of old-style warmth, bottles of wine lining every wall, with photos of customers over the years on the walls, as well as cases of butterflies, many of them donated recently by a local resident. Stepping in from a cold, moonless December night had something of the timeless feel of a traveller finding an inn with a roaring fire.
What You’ll Love
- Old-country warmth the moment you step in
- Pasta made on site (often in the front window), with a seasonal short menu
- Big, generous Italian flavours
- A legendary Sicilian lemon tart
- An authentic vibe and hosts who make it feel effortless.
A Case of Mistaken Identities
And here the hilarity started. James, the owner, resplendent in a fine camel-coloured blazer, had forgotten that RB was coming, and assumed I was an architectural critic, after showing an interest in the building. Naturally, I put on my best Jonathan Meades and let it play out. As a result of James’s enthusiasm, I could tell you a lot about timber beams, but I’ll spare you.
Communal tables and confident simplicity
My wife and I were seated on one of the large, oak, communal tables – there are some more private tables too – and were soon joined by a gaggle of school-run mums on a girls’ night out. The menu is short and manageable, mostly pasta, all made here, much of it in the front window of the restaurant – or ‘osteria’, traditionally a sort of working diner – every morning. It changes seasonally, occasionally randomly, and its simplicity is pleasingly confident.
Deep flavours and a dish for the ages
First courses of arancini (stuffed rice balls) and smoked salmon got the ball rolling nicely; the salmon was particularly notable – very thick-cut, coated in a pastrami spice mix and cold-smoked on site.
The meatballs and focaccia that followed can be described by one word: deep. The other main we chose, the stuffed mushroom agnolotti, was up there with the Gods: hints of sweetness with the meatiness of mushrooms and an unidentifiable floral element floating high in the mix. It was a dish for the ages, and it happened not once that evening but twice, as the pudding arrived.
A legendary lemon tart
This, the Sicilian lemon tart, was essentially a superlative lemon meringue pie, a 60s English pub favourite, resurrected for the modern age with an incredible meringue topping made of clouds foraged from the sky and lightly toasted. She, who is so often right, is better on puddings than me, and thought she could count on one hand the times she’s had anything like it in half a century of pudding eating.
It’s not just the food
Yes, dear reader. Everything you’ve heard about Poco is true. The food is unfussy, completely authentic and quietly spectacular. I’m not even convinced that’s why people love it though. I think they go for the vibe. Owner James (the ‘front man’!) and Daniel (silver wine fox and man of the world) saunter around confidently dispensing advice on the menu, cracking jokes, and creating a real, old-school vibe that smacks of the old country, not for effect, but because they can’t help it.
A Milan flashback in the Sussex Downs
After a childhood (or at least five years of it) raised in Milan, the vibe at Poco was like being a sailor smelling the sea again after a landlocked eternity. The big communal tables help this along: it’s not as though you’re at a dinner party; you mostly do your own thing, but there’s a bit of “ooh – that looks good – I might copy you” from fellow diners. At one point in the evening, one of the school-run mums (all of whom are regulars) got up and played the piano. No one blinked an eyelid. There’s so much chatter going on that it became part of the general vibe.
A bit of theatre
At another point, I heard James say to the couple behind us: “You’re very decisive, aren’t you? No messing around!” “He’s a lawyer,” deadpanned the man’s wife, and a chuckle went around. The osteria/working diner thing is real, at least until Daniel approaches with the wine, poured by an amazing device called a Coravin that sticks needles through the cork and sucks out one glass at a time, oxygenating it as it comes out. We’ll see more of these, as the wine-pairing trend gathers pace. In the hands of a lesser man, it might have seemed a bit OTT, but Daniel is tall and mysterious. At some point, I think he might have said he didn’t work there, which was quite exciting. I gave the sort of nod you might give a bent industrialist or mafia man in the Italian 1980s and asked no more. Daniel is not his real name.
The best kind of service
In the end, I confessed I’m not an architectural critic. “Oh, you’re the blog guy!” beamed Jamie. If you go… and do go… you might, if you want to keep the joke going, explain that there was a bit of a mix-up, and that you actually are the architectural critic.
One of the best things about our evening was something that didn’t happen, I realised later. At no point during the meal did anyone shuffle over to fish for praise with the “is everything all right with your meal?” routine. They know it’s all right, and they know you know it too.
