Bolo review: Filling stomachs might not stop this trattoria going belly up

At 77 years old, the only thing I intend to be running is a bath. Gennaro Contaldo has instead chosen to open his first restaurant in 17 years, in what might be one of the most brutal years in living memory to be a restaurateur in London. But Contaldo is no ordinary septuagenarian. He is a daytime-television institution, half of Two Greedy Italians, mentor to much of the industry, and the man behind Passione on Charlotte Street, which he ran for a decade before it closed in 2009 after the financial crash. Without Contaldo we wouldn’t have a fully formed Jamie Oliver.His new restaurant, Bolo, is an intimate, 32-cover trattoria a few steps from Piccadilly Circus. It’s run by the Brava Hospitality Group — the people behind Prezzo and the recently defibrillated Jamie’s Italian. The offer sounds enticing enough: antipasti, seven homemade pastas and two desserts. The pastas come in hefty portions, so you can get a demi of his feted bolo (bolognese) with tagliatelle for a mere £7 — about the going rate for a pint in Zone 1.Gennaro Bolo.London is in the grip of the “austere-ia” (the spare mid-century-chaired Italian serving tortellini in brodo). Is there room, too, for something satisfying and slightly suburban, where you can leave full and financially intact? Think back to the golden age of the shopping centre Carluccio’s and the multiplex Zizzi, when the only thing standing between you and the Odeon was a penne giardiniera and a tin of grissini. Are we due a renaissance?The restaurant is a Lucozade-orange pop on an otherwise grey street, sitting suspiciously next door to a Prezzo. Inside it’s snug and sunny, with butter-yellow panelling and a terracotta arch. We perch at the granite-topped counter by the window, beneath maybe 40 framed photographs of Contaldo. The effect falls somewhere between a hall of fame and a wake. The room is full and thrumming, the service is peppy, and it doesn’t feel soulless given its corporate parentage.Pulpy rags of greens float in the wreckageThere’s no wine list as such. Instead, there’s one per colour, plus a handful of cocktails including a negroni. A bad day to be a glass of Pinot Grigio, is all I’ll say. First come ’nduja meatballs, a radicchio and rocket salad, and focaccia. The meatballs are excellent: fat, coarse-ground and yielding, with a ripple of warmth from the ’nduja — the sugo beneath them is concentrated, sweet yet sour. The salad is made with no love. It’s mostly rocket, the radicchio more of a rumour. The rosemary-flecked focaccia does its duty as a sauce mop, but it’s more Travelodge pillow than heavy-tog duvet. Everything arrives on identical white plates with a coloured rim that feel liberated from the university halls-of-residence aisle at Habitat.Bolo.We order the “Jamie”, named after you know who: mezze maniche with sausage, Calabrian chilli bolo and friarielli. Much like the Naked Chef, it lacks coverage. The sauce has been diluted so liberally with pasta water that it barely clings to the tubes. Unrendered sausage forms a small archipelago, the parmesan has slumped into a half-melted lid, and pulpy rags of greens float in the wreckage. The orecchiette with octopus and ’nduja has a pleasing brininess and a lift of parsley, but has fallen victim to the same pasta-water rinse cycle. The octopus is reduced to something approaching mince, and the sauce refuses to cling, leaving the little ears bobbing about like something Van Gogh left behind in Arles.Bolo restaurant.Salvation comes courtesy of the oven. In the conchiglioni al forno, big shells are stuffed with ragu and mozzarella, then given a proper scorch. The heat has driven off the excess water and left the pasta edges with a lovely crunch. It’s solid and perfectly tasty, and an £8 half portion, an £8 glass of Montepulciano and the ricotta doughnuts (hot, sugary, very end-of-the-pier) would make a decent meal. But a few fine plates do not a trattoria make. Read MoreDespite Contaldo’s name over the door and dozens of photos of him on the walls, little of his touch seems to have made it to the table. Until someone switches off the pasta-water fire hydrant, I fear Bolo is sunk.