Perfect Anniversary dinner at Villa Bianca in Hampstead

Two storey Villa Bianca Restaurant in Hampstead. Photo by Angela Lansbury. Copyright.

Location, Location

Hampstead is a lovely area. Lively. But the hotel is a few steps down a quiet side street.

. It is in a wuite side street just off the lively main street of Hampstead on the hill.

 The name of the restaurant means white house

Seating Area - Up or Down?

The last time we visited was two years ago when we sat downstairs in the window by the door. I think upstairs suited us better.

This time, in April 2024, we had a table for seven upstairs at Villa Bianca for an anniversary dinner. We were beside the grand (samll grand - that sounds like an oxymoron)) piano upstairs. I thought the music would be too loud for conversation but we managed okay.

Upstairs also has the advantage that the toilets are only steps away. 

Drinks & Service

We started with the house Champagne. The male and female servers were smiling and helpful and a delight. Our Portuguese but multilingual waiter was charming.

The menu has a range of prices from the mushrooms on toast which was huge, three pieces, enough for two people and a piece to take home.. I was saving myself for the main course and dessert. 

Food

My main course was chicken. We swapped around. The others were happy with their liver and fish.

The dessert was chocolate pudding, oozing. I would say everything was above average. Nt Michelin standard but very satisfying. Faultless.

All in all an excellent evening.

Anniversary

My husband said he had told them it was our anniversary. They did not do anything but I had my own paper plate with the word Joyeux Anniversaire and we ordered Champagne, and our guests brought cards and gifts so we did not notice not having the word happy anniversary on a plate.

I think that restaurants seeing you order Champagne might ask if you are celebrating and if so do something special.

Our three year old got up to change places and collided with a waiter and she burst into tears. The manager found her some complimentary breadsticks which instantly distracted and consoled her. My husband said, we got freebies, we have no complaints.

Prices

If you ordered lobster or different drinks and Champagnes you could have a much larger bill if you are looking to spend more and are seeking more. But we were happy with things which suited our budget and have happy memories.

Useful Website

https://villabiancagroup.com/villa-bianca/

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Villa Bianca, Beautiful Restaurant in Happy Hampstead Clean, White and Bright, with Fast, Friendly Service

 

Villa Bianca exterior. Photo by Angela Lansbury. Copyright.

Villa Bianca 

Villa Bianca is a popular though pricey Italian restaurant in happy Hampstead.

White Decor

This clean white restaurant is one of the whitest and cleanest I have seen. Bianca is Italian for white.

Two Sittings

They were fully booked for the eight o'clock sitting on a Saturday night so we had to settle for 6 pm - and agree to be finished before 8 pm. That suited the hosts of the evening who had a baby. The main menu does not have the desserts but I always look at desserts first to decide whether I want to leave room for dessert and forego the starter. I also save time on occasions like this when either the restaurant or the dinner hosts might want us to dash off without delay. If I already know what I want for dessert I can whisper my order to the waiter or order instantly without waiting for the menu to appear and delay everybody by reading it and discussing it. I already know from this dessert menu that I want the strudel and when I tell the others we agree to opt for dessert instead of starters.

Extensive Menu at Villa Bianca. Dessert menu. Photo by Angela Lansbury.

Starters

I cannot comment on the starters. Only to say that there were several and shellfish was prominent. I am allergic to shellfish. 

We all went without a starter, which saved time as well as money and left room for dessert. 

Meanwhile, the restaurant provided nibbles of a delicious tiny, one bite size spinach mille feuille. Also bread sticks. 

Bread Sticks

The bread sticks were a hit with the baby. Easy to handle, hold, wave about, hand to mother, and grab back, and chew on with five tiny teeth. Entertainment for all.

Toilets

Time to kill and fill, while waiting for the main course. A chance to locate the toilet, before drinks make me too tired and wobbly to mount the stairs. Yes, the toilets are upstairs.

The stairs have a rail on one side - that's the third restaurant I've visited recently with only one rail. A very elegant rail.

Upstairs was another dining room with a pianist, at what looks like a small grand piano - and a small balcony. 

And the toilets? Must be down a couple of steps. I'm fine with a couple more steps. But where do wheelchair users go?

The thickest small towels, folded for each person. The two cubicles were so clean I felt that you could put your handbag on the floor. 

Back to the table with its white cloth to chat whilst waiting for the main courses.

Main courses

Main course mushrooms and pasta. Vegetarian option. Also kosher. Photo by Angela Lansbury.  

The menu was not the same as on the website. My husband thought that was good because it showed that the chef changed the menu. I thought that the website should have been kept up to date, as I had saved time by reading the website menu in advance, and had chosen chicken in creamy mushroom sauce and was disappointed not to find it. However, i got to try the mushrooms. Good texture and great flavour.

My main course was poussin. Poussin means young chicken. I think that I speak fluent French. However, I somehow thought that poussin was a different kind of fowl, a cross between a quail and a chicken. I was wrong. It's just chicken. Very young chicken. So you get a whole one. Sometimes called spring chicken. 

I am a bit quiet in the conversation. I am thinking about whether it is healthier and tastier to eat young food (veal) (and I now realize poussin). One's first thought might be that an animal should be allowed as many years of life as possible. That somehow a baby anything, cow or bird, is cute, so it is more unkind to kill it than an old animal nearer the end of its life, spared getting old. I am inclined to the view that it is better to have circumcision early (at 8 days, Jewish style, rather than 8 years, Moslem style when the child might fear or remember it, worst of all as an adult, unless an adult has fortitude and a stoic philosophy). The diners ask the waiter about the source of the veal. Is it banned in the UK, imported from overseas? 

And what of abortion? Best to have contraception - although Catholics used to ban that, which inadvertently, as so often happens, results in greater distress to the mother and potential infant by making the cut off point later. Better to have abortion than a child killed at birth, like in India, and sometimes other countries. Certainly less strain on the mother's body.

The diners are not so bothered as to refuse to eat or order the veal. Go with the flow. The law-makers have made the rules. Here is the food. Lions don't worry about their lunch or dinner. They just eat. 

Veal in Villa Bianca Restaurant, Hampstead, London. Photo by Angela Lansbury.

Two others chose the veal, which came as a cutlet. Almost thick as a fillet steak, and soft to cut and eat.

 Another diner chose the pasta with mushrooms. With some fiddling around, I could have constructed veal with mushrooms, or asked for it, since the kitchen had veal and the mushrooms in a cream sauce. My plate ping pong of main courses was good enough to give me a taste of the veal and mushrooms as well as my poussin, which was good enough, although two of us agreed it was a little dry and unexciting.

 You had to pay extra for potatoes. Mash or saute or another kind. The saute potatoes were cooked with the skins on. Not my preference. My husband says that is how they should be done Healthier. (And quicker.)

Dessert

Desserts included tiramisu, strudel, chocolate pudding, ice creams and sorbets.

One of our group had the tiramisu. 

Ice Cream

My favourite of the desserts was the scoop of hazelnut ice cream. It comes with an upside down cone on top. 

Strudel at Villa Bianca, London, England. Photo by Angela Lansbury.

Strudel

I also shared the strudel. First bite was perfect, pistacchio nut. (The Italian spelling is with a double c. The English spelling is often with a single c.) 

Then on to the apple. My final verdict was that the strudel was tasty, but not much better than my favourite place for desserts, B & K back in Hatch End, NW London. 

Coffee and Biscuits

My husband ordered an espresso coffee. In Starbucks he orders a double espresso, which in Italian is doppio espresso (can panne - with milk or cream). I get to finish the last drop with the milk, which he does not want much of. However, he felt that in an Italian restaurant it would be more correct to have a single espresso without the milk. 

So the coffee was correctly minuscule (that is the way espresso is served, small size and strong to revive you after over-eating at your meal). But the way it was served was good - with not one but two thick concave biscuits. We broke them in half so each of the four of us could have a mouthful. The biscuits were hard and crunchy.

The biscuits were the final good note. As Shakespeare said: All's well that ends well.

To conclude, the decor here is top notch, at top prices. Definitely a great place for a celebration, or a regular treat.

Service

The service was great. Attentive. Friendly. Fast. All in all, an excellent evening.

We finished in time.

An early sitting gives you time to go home and talk on the light summer evenings. But the full restaurant at 8 pm had more of an atmosphere, a buzz of excitement.

The pianist upstairs played loudly. But you could hardly hear him downstairs. All I could hear was just a pleasant murmur of animated conversation. 

As we left, we looked behind at the pretty flower displays in front of the windows. Above was the balcony with a table for two, just the two. Romeo and Juliet. Romantic. 

Italian restaurants are famous for being family friendly. It's part of the Italian culture.

Practical Information

Villa Bianca

1 Perrins Court

London NW3 1OS

tel 020 7435 3131

contact@villabiancagroup.com

www.villabiancagroup.com

Also on their business card

Piccola, 33 Heath Street, NW3 6TR

The Fish Cafe, 71 Hampstead Heath High Street NW3 IQP

The Coffee Cup, 71 Hampstead High Street

Connubio, 229 Muswell Hill

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Pianist at Sheraton Towers Hotel

I have often heard the pianist at Sheraton Towers hotel in Singapore. At last I got to meet her,

She says she plays quieter when she can see people sitting nearby, so that they can talk. Isn't that considerate.

Angela Lansbury, left, pianist, right

Statues of Mrs Beeton, Heath Robinson and others wanted in Harrow

Nelson's column in Trafalgar Square is one of London's well known landmarks.Oscar Wilde reclines nearby. Freud's bust is in Swiss Cottage. Mandela is in Westminster. Florence Nightingale stands holding her lamp outside a London hospital on Waterloo Place. Handel had a statue erected in Vauxhall Gardens, central London during his lifetime. A statue of singer and songwriter Amy Winehouse is in Stables Market, Camden Town. What have we got in Harrow? Yesterday I discovered to my delight that a page on Harrow had been set up on Facebook. I posted on it that I wanted statues placed around Harrow:

1 Mrs Beeton, cookery and recipe pioneer, should stand in Hatch End, where she lived and died. A plaque to her is on the wall where her house was in The Broadway, still a broad or wide street.

2 Heath Robinson, the cartoonist, should have a statue in the Pinner Park or better still in the High Street, to draw attention to the museum devoted to him which has opened in Pinner this year.

3 W S Gilbert, who wrote the words, "I've got a little list ..." in his operetta, Gilbert of Gilbert and Sullivan fame, was also a magistrate. His house where he lived in Victorian times is now a hotel but he should have a statue, somewhere prominent and central, perhaps Harrow.

4 Roger Bannister who won the race and established the record for the four minute mile, has a playing field named after him. He is still alive, in his eighties. If a statue of him takes as long as the Heath Robinson Museum to be established (twenty years of campaigning), he would be well over a hundred if he were still alive by the time his statue is up. It should show him running, Many pictures of him running must exist.

5 Crosse and Blackwell
They are both buried in All Saints church, Harrow Weald, with big mausoleums in the grounds near the entrance to the church. Blackwell's house has been demolished but his front garden is now a park on the Uxbridge Road (see one of my previous posts for pictures) and he gave land for St Anselm's church in Hatch End.

6 Screaming Lord Sutch
Great character. Has to have a statue in central Harrow.

7 Leefe Robinson
WWI hero. Buried in All Saint's church cemetery extension, across the Uxbridge Road opposite the church. The pub next door to the church was named Leefe Robinson and locals campaigned for new pub owners to preserve the name (and press cuttings about him inside the building, left of the doorway).

8 Winston Churchill
Writer of so many famous speeches. He inspired everybody to fight on in WWII. "Never, ever, ever give up." His statue is already outside Parliament in central London. Let's have another in Harrow.


In London in addition to our classic busts of people such as Kennedy, and a statue of Charlie Chaplin standing, we have modern statues such as:
a) The Australian mapmaker, Captain Matthew, and his cat on Euston station.
b) Artist Coneo who painted trains and stations with his palette on Waterloo station.
c) Sherlock Holmes standing wearing his distinctive deerstalker outside Baker Street.
d) Brunel in his high hat, his top hat, on Paddington station.

I would like to see statues all along St Anne's, or St George's shopping areas in Harrow, like they are all along Pietrowsky Street in Lodz, where you see a statue of Arthur Rubinstein, pianist, who was born in Lodz.

Many other famous people have lived or worked in Harrow.
Winston Churchill went to school in Harrow. A picture of him is on the Whitefriars glass in the Harrow Civic Centre, which is going to be demolished. I hope they preserve the glass, as well as the wall of tiles commemorating famous people and events, and the parlour's cabinet of gifts from various groups, from or to former mayors, and the marquetry on the wall in the parlour showing famous people of Harrow.

9Byron
He wrote and went to school at Harrow on the Hill. His young daughter was buried in the church grounds, almost inside the church door.

10 Claire Rayner wrote in Harrow, a formidable woman and campaigner on health issues.

Central London has many more: Dick Whittington and his cat. Harrow is not short of famous people. We need statues of our heroes and heroines to inspire students and install pride and ambition in our residents and workers and visitors.

I want to keep this list in one place so I shall probably come back and update rather than starting another post on the same subject. Georgia Weston, Sue and others have commented on the Facebook page on Harrow.

Photo of sculpture of Arthur Rubinstein seated at the piano in Lodz, Poland, from Wikipedia.
Other photos by Angela Lansbury. Copyright Angela Lansbury
Angela Lansbury, travel writer, author and photographer.