New on Wine List Confidential: Bocca di Lupo

Jacob Kenedy and Victor Hugo’s smart, art-festooned eatery celebrates, in their own words, ‘the obscure and the delicious highlights of food and wine from across Italy’s 20 regions’.

Born in the frightful vintage of for wine (1980) Jacob Kennedy previously trained at Moro and Boulevard, before opening Bocca di Lupo in 2008 with fellow Moro alumnus, Victor Hugo, followed by ‘Gelupo’, which, he promises, offers ‘the best gelato this side of the Alps’ in the same street, and, in 2017, the Islington pub, ‘Plaquemine Lock’, specialising in Cajun and Creole dishes.

‘Bocca di Lupo celebrates the regionality of Italian food and wine, specialising in obscure dishes, local winemaking styles and grapes,’ says Kenedy. Of the 220 bin list, Kenedy considers it important that, to sate the range of cravings which might arise, he would be happy to drink each of the selections at home. Fortunately, guests seem to agree with what they are prescribed in the bibulous sense. ‘Our customers have always been educated, adventurous, and Italophile – and grow more so, year-on-year. The demographic which passes through my door is turned on to once obscure regions, such as Etna, Le Marche, Puglia, Campania and the Alto Adige…’

Provenance of dishes, ideally savoured at the long Carrara marble counter in view of the grill, is marked on menus, and may include buffalo mozzarella bocconcini (Rome), sea bream Carpaccio with orange and rosemary (Veneto), spaghettini with sea urchin, butter and lemon (Puglia), and roast suckling pig with fennel, wine and bay (Emilia), ideally followed by a caffè alla nocciola (Neapolitan coffee with egg yolks and hazelnut) and then several scoops from Gelupo.

Incidentally, Kenedy used wine as a protest in 2013 when smashing five bottles from supplier, Fulvio Bressan in front of the restaurant to indicate his disgust at Bressan’s use of the epithet, ‘sporca scimmia nera’ about Italy’s recently appointed minister for integration, Cécile Kyenge.

To see the WLC position and scores for this review click here

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the drinks business published the inaugural 2017 Wine List Confidential: One to Sixty-One guide last year. We are currently working on a new 2018 edition and are busy re-reviewing top-scoring restaurants and adding new entries to the database. Check back later in the year for final scoring and position of restaurants.