Dining In London: After-Theater Supper With A Calabrian Accent At Radici In Islington

The food is exuberant and friendly too, if this can be said of something to eat. There are certainly plenty of southern Italian flavors, and these tend to make people happy. To call it home-style cooking would not do justice to Mr. Mazzei’s professionalism, but some dishes have something of the Italian grandmother about them. There are, for instance, spicy meatballs – listed as an antipasto, and served in a portion easily large enough to share or to eat as a main dish with a side order of, say, potato gattò (from the French gâteau): a Calabrian/Neapolitan potato cake enriched with cheese. And there’s spicy chicken Calabrese, which in Little Italys across the United States would probably, and wrongly, be called chicken cacciatore.