Mammamia! This paint-by-numbers tratis bellissima

Senza Fondo! Now here's a place playing a risky game. Has any recent opening seemed so easy to detest? Curl your lip at the puppyish excla- mation mark, the punctuation of choice forthe mentally unassembled.

- DAVID ELLIS

Disdainfully tap your fag ash at the gruesomely twee job title founder Joe Worthington has given himself: Chief Béechamel Officer. Turn your head from its motto: this is somewhere “where lasagna knowsno limits”. He means lasagne. It’s enough to make you sigh your soul away. Who the hell is this cheery? Haven't they seen the state of things?

No limit lasagne is not the name of an Italian sex game, though depending on how much pleasure one derives from eating, I don't deny it could be considered one. This premise, of end-less portions of lasagne for £20, means Senza Fondo! is booked out for the next three months. Under closer inspection, what is proffered as a bargain is in fact akind of bait and switch, lasagne being too filling to go back for over and again. There are only so many ragu-soaked pocket squares of pasta one can reasonably expect to get through. “I pity him,’ I said softly, looking at a solitary figure giving it a go.