Mandragola (La)

Nestling in a lovely Avenue de Tervueren townhouse, Mandragola is today enjoying its second wind. The setting has been pleasantly reinvigorated, the furniture has regained its delightful affluence and there's a young couple behind the bar. No more was needed to give the place a new momentum. And what a momentum! Since he has been installed at the ovens, Umberto Piccinni has stepped on the gas. Our man cooks the South, his South. Not only that of Italy but that particular South of the Mediterranean basin in phase with his times, far from clichéd, but enriched by his past experiences and by his errant, gourmet antecedents. Here therefore is a young, inquisitive and daring establishment, close to its customers with a cooking of the product that Umberto manages to magnify to the extreme, making it as spruce as you could wish, always in movement, besotted with spices and vegetables, and remarkably spectacular. So let's take a look at those menus with their value-for-money that invites complicity. No exuberance here, just sincerity.