Get Your Aperitivo On At Kensington's New Italian Joint

Enoteca Rosso's been stacking up the #designgoals hashtags on social feeds, thanks to its floor-to-ceiling wine racks — covering the walls of the big warehouse-ish space on Kensington High Street.

Any average human is only going to be able to make a tiny dent in such a massive collection on one visit, but we do our best to hit a range of their 30+ wines by the glass. On the wine front we just do what our waiter tells us to, which thoroughly pays off. The several reds we try between us are all bang-on the descriptions they're pitched with — and all at the affordable end (£5.50-£8) for wine this good, in not-famously-affordable Kensington.

The bar-meets-restaurant vibe — a mix of high tables with barstools and lower tables set up for dinner — makes this great aperitivo territory. If you worked or lived near here, you could drop in for a glass of red and a sharing board of charcuterie, turning your average after-work boozing into something infinitely more elegant.

If, like for us, Kensington takes some detouring for you, there are plenty of reasons to make yours a fully-fledged dinner visit. Enoteca Rosso dishes come in small, medium or large (with the glossing: "to taste... to indulge... to share"), and both our pastas are indulgent by nature as well as in size — the lamb and saffron tagliatelle fiercely meaty and scattered with salty raspadura shavings of cheese.

On balance, though, it's the breads and meat boards we fall for hardest, the Amarone board a mix of crudo ham, Gombitelli salami, Fontina DOP and quadrello di bufala cheeses. The small chunks of focaccia that arrive pre-ordering are warm, springy, salty and gently crusty at the edges. Good though the pasta dishes are, if we find ourselves at Enoteca Rosso again it'll be for this — little cubes of tomato-studded focaccia, a rich, cured meat board and a London venue that really knows how to do aperitivo hour.

Oh, and a glass or 30+ of wine.

Enoteca Rosso, 276-280 Kensington High Street, W8 6ND.