Lady’s Enoteca Rabezzana Review

Today I want to share my Enoteca Rabezzana review with you. This wine bar by Smithfield Market is a great place to eat and drink in London.

Enoteca Rabezzana Review

One of the things I miss most about living in San Francisco is the wine bars. In the same way that London has a pub on every corner, San Francisco has a wine bar on every street.

Don’t get me wrong, I love a good pub. But sometimes it’s nice to swap cider for wine and thousand-year-old carpet for fresh wood floors and wall-to-wall windows. Like at Enoteca Rabezzana, my new favorite wine bar in London.

Enoteca Rabezzana in London

Enoteca Rabezzana opened in Clerkenwell in 2014 in conjunction with Italian winemakers Rabezzana Vini.

This London wine bar and restaurant has a 100-strong wine list with a focus on the Piedmont region. Its menu features lots of Italian tapas and other traditional dishes.

Food and Wine

I’m here tonight as a guest of the restaurant to taste some of the wine and enjoy a range of food cooked by the head chef.

My friend and I sit at a high table by the window, enjoying views of the iconic Smithfield Market as we start on a bottle of Farnese ‘Fantini’ Montepulciano d’Abruzzo and a platter of cured meats.

Enoteca Rabezzana’s menu has a variety of choices, from small plates to classic Italian dishes and desserts.

We sample a few tapas options to start, falling in love with the impossibly tender grilled octopus and indulging in little Tuscan ham panini.

While we’re dining, we soak up the ambiance of the lively open kitchen, the mix of high and low tables, and rows of wine bottles lining the black-and-white patterned walls.

There’s a corporate social event taking place on one side of the room, and we can tell that the wine bar is a popular place for firms in the City of London to host office drinks and closing dinners.

And speaking of dinners, our main courses present two sides of Enoteca Rabezzana’s offerings: a trofie pasta dish and a grilled beef tagliata with caramelized onions.

The pasta is delicious. The onions on the beef are a bit sweet for my taste, but the underlying meat is as good as I would expect from a restaurant located across the street from London’s most famous meat market.

We round out the dinner with some deliciously unique desserts. The chocolate tiramisu comes not on a plate, but in a glass. It’s more like a chocolate mousse than a tiramisu, but regardless, it’s rich, creamy, and divine.

The same goes for my friend’s hot chocolate flan, which tastes like a gooey chocolate brownie. I can’t make up enough excuses for needing just one more bite.

Enoteca Rabezzana: The Verdict

By the time we finish dessert, our bottle of wine is nearing its end. We’re tempted by the 99 others on the list, but there’s plenty of time to come back and enjoy them on another visit.

And given my homesickness for wine bars and Enoteca Rabezzana’s abundant supply of wine, I’m sure it won’t be long until I’m back.

Find this post helpful? Buy me a coffee!

New here? Join thousands of others and subscribe to the A Lady in London blog via email.