“ A reliable Italian and old -school '' – Jay Rayner reviews Da Mario, Kensington

Unlock the publisher's digest free

Roula Khalaf, editor -in -chief of the FT, selects her favorite stories in this weekly newsletter.

The choices of restaurants often respond to a simple question. It could be: where will I take this friend with the right gossip? How about Andrew Edmunds to Soho, where the gutter candle projects intimacy and food is reliable without being distracting. Or, where can I take generations of the family, toddlers? An old man stagnates from a Greek Cypriot place like Lemonia with Primrose Hill where they love children and respect seniority? Or maybe: Where can I find a serious old-fashioned French? Why, Otto is on the Gray's Inn Road of course, where they will set fire to your dinner table, tighten the cornerstone of a duck, then silence with Bordeaux de Bordeaux.

Da Mario is the answer to another question of the restaurant, which has long disturbed many people: where devil can we go and eat before attending a show at the Royal Albert Hall? With the Proms 2025 program which should be announced next week, this is a question of urgent concern.

Above our table is a paint with Mario's chocolate box with a Diana with a red froche, which admires its pizza. It is not an understatement

It would be the hyperbole to describe the largest concert hall in the nation as a seat abandoned in a restaurant desert. Scan a digital card and you will find the red knife and the occasional fork. There is Ognisko Polskie, or the Polish Hearth Club, but it is already the response of so many people that, for show evenings, you have to plan a long way to go. There are a few places around the South Kensington station, but it is a miserable 15 -minute walk. Generally, I went to Mandarin Kitchen on Queensway for lobster noodles, then I cabled it, but it is an idiotic solution.

It turned out that the answer was hidden at sight. Da Mario, in a corner of the Gloucester road just nine minutes walk from the Royal Albert Hall, is barely obscure, especially for those who have a taste for royal anecdotes. But in a city of feverish restoration, full of young things making things diverted with hand pasta and modist ingredients, it is the kind of reliable Italian of the old school that can be overlooked too easily. He first opened in the mid -1960s as the first branch of Express pizza. Mario Molino was a founder, with Peter Boizot, from the venerable alley chain but, in 1966, the restaurant became its own place. He has always served pizzas, but also a wider Italian menu, only without mention of “second” because, after antipasti and pasta, the British found that confusing.

Currently, the Italian building is scaffolded, so they have bumped it in scintillating fairy lights, as if it was a lighthouse of Gloucester Road. But you can always read the legend “Princess Diana” on the steps. She used to sneak here from the Kensington Palace for a pizza with the children, a fact that they referred. Rather a lot. On the wall above our table is a paint in the chocolate box of Mario with a Diana with a red froche, which admires its pizza. It is not an understatement. On the other wall are photographs of Diana during a trip in 1987 to Saudi Arabia and with a horse.

A large part of the dining room on the creamy ground floor is an exciting kitsch. Above the strangely decorated ham cooler is a corner of the religious icon: Buddha, a Thai goddess and Jesus, which covers various votive bases. There is a Pidshop Eden project of false foliage around the windows and a large photographic collage of the major cultural stars that we loved and lost: Prince, Hendrix, Hepburn, Einstein, the Usual. There is a huge suspended chandelier and ceiling fans who beat the heat. He is angry and, to be so, completely delicious.

Because above all, food is exactly what you want it to be. A bunch of thin-silk fennel salami in a-white silk, the pink from the bottom of a baby, is served at room temperature, so that fat melts immediately on the tongue. A cast iron dish is filled with a Melanzane went among which the stringy mozzarella seems to have been test to the fusion of the fubergine to create a cutleble whole. The thick shrimp by the thumb arrives in a bubbling bath of oil with garlic and chili tips. I take a look at the server who, before I can ask, says: “You need bread”. Warm and elastic focaccia slabs are delivered. A regular has just recovered a pizza. She gave a strait of Limoncello while she waits. Two Italian boys arrive after us, command a tricolor salad, a pizza, a rigatoni da Mario and a Ragù pappardelle, and praised everything before having finished our sector. They didn't say a word of English.

Our pasta dishes, which is not crossed on the £ 20 mark, are perfect examples of themselves. The strands are slippery, but always have a bite because that's what they do all day every day. There is a vongol of spaghettini, generous with sweet clams in the shell left behind him a broth of butter asking me the remaining bread. The Spaghetti Aglio is delivered with slim and translucent garlic slices, as if someone has been with cloves with the Goodfellas Prison razor pares. Nothing here is diverted or surprising or new, which is exactly how we want it. As a result, there is a tiramisu for dessert, which is so light that it can practically be inhaled.

Below is a larger and quieter dining room. Upstairs, everything is noise and chatter, including servers who tell me that they have no idea why there are photographs of various Saudi kings on the walls because they have never eaten here. But Diana did it. Have you seen her painting with Mario behind you? Yes of course. Mario Molino died over ten years ago and the restaurant is now led by her son Marco, who probably believes that nothing here is broken and that nothing needs to fix. It is a living point of life of the first wave of post-war restaurants in London, which has endured because what it does, it does very well. In this case, it is also nine minutes walk from the Royal Albert Hall. Although I will not need a proms ticket to justify my return.

Send an email to Jay to jay.rayner@ft.com

Read Jay Rayner every weekend Ft modify. Free for 30 days, then £ 4.99 per month. Send an email to Jay to jay.rayner@ft.com

Find out first of all our latest stories – Follow the FT weekend magazine on X And Ft weekend on Instagram