Italian restaurant Lombo is between Balmes, Aribau and Augusta on the quiet Cardona square. An elegant modern space with British racing green walls. It is the restaurant of Eugeni De Diego (an ex-ElBulli chef – yes this is still a quotable accomplishment in these parts.) and his partner Ana Alvarado (ditto but pastry.) On our visit, the clientele was largely local . The servers strode around in long aprons and addressed us solicitously. Less Italian and more French to my mind. The menu is a collection of emblematic Roman dishes like pizza fritta, sepia with polenta, parmigiana and so on (See Lombo’s menu here).
The prices steered us towards a couple of starters and two mains and we still ended up with a lunchtime bill of 45€ a head. A porcheta bikini relied on sweet brioche bread. Meanwhile, the burrata salad was a delicate plate of well-purveyed ingredients – figs, endives, buratta. Neither of those dishes were interesting enough for me to nudge you over to Lombo.
It’s the pasta and meat dishes that do that along with the atmosphere of the restaurant itself. The handmade pasta is made in-house and there is talk around town that they tried 70 different pasta brands until they finally picked their choices for the dried pasta dishes. The truffled pasta feels appropriate for the season and has me dreaming of chestnuts and celeriac which are on the horizon now. A petite dish of tagliatta accompanies it. Yes, this is more like it. I would urge you to stay in this territory.
The dishes at Lombo seem to share a small format. This means that there is room for us to share a slab of tiramisu. All in all a good restaurant which is made so by the cumulative effect of space, service, ingredients and recipes.
Restaurant Lombo
C/ Moliné 1
08006 Eixample
barlombo.com
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