Lobster Linguine, A Caviar Pizza, And A Nine-Course Argument: What To Order At Alba
Some restaurants build their reputations on a single dish. Alba, the Amalfi-led Italian dining room opposite Harrods, has built its on three — and they tell you almost everything you need to know about how Roman executive chef Stefano Tortelli runs his kitchen. One is a classic done with discipline. One is a provocation that turns out to make sense. One is the long argument that ties the whole menu together. Order in this order.
The Lobster Linguine
The first dish you will hear mentioned by anyone who has eaten at Alba is the lobster linguine, and it deserves the attention. Hand-rolled linguine, made on site each morning, is dressed in a light tomato emulsion built around shellfish stock and finished with a generous portion of native lobster — typically a half-tail, usually a claw, always plated with the visible confidence of a kitchen that has done this many, many times.
The technical detail that matters: the pasta is cooked just on the right side of al dente, the sauce is emulsified rather than reduced, and the lobster is brought to the plate at warm rather than hot. The result is a dish that reads as classical Amalfi cooking — there is no reinvention here, no tweezers, no foam — but in execution is closer to the standard of a one-Michelin Italian room than to its high-street neighbours.
What to drink with it: a glass of Greco di Tufo from Campania, which Alba's wine list carries by the glass. Bright, citrus-driven, mineral enough to handle the tomato.
The Alba Pizza
This is the dish that gets the table-next-door watching. The Alba Pizza is a thin Roman base, fior di latte, scrambled eggs, and a generous spoon of black caviar. On paper it sounds like a provocation engineered to trend on Instagram, and to be fair some of it is. In the mouth, however, it is a properly thought-out idea: the caviar provides the salt that the cheese is deliberately holding back, the eggs add a softness that pulls the dish away from the usual pizza register, and the base — properly hot, properly thin — keeps everything in proportion.
The trick is to share it as a starter rather than treating it as a main, which most tables work out within about thirty seconds of the plate arriving. Cut into eighths. Pace yourself. The caviar is the point but not the whole point.
What to drink with it: Franciacorta. Alba carries two by the glass; either works. The bubbles do the cleanup the dish demands.
The Nine-Course Tasting Menu
The single most rewarding way to eat at Alba — and the dish, broadly defined, that the regulars come back for — is Tortelli's nine-course tasting menu. It is the chef's argument in full, and it lands.
Without spoiling the order (the menu rotates with the season), expect: a raw fish course built around citrus and Sicilian olive oil, an absolutely uncomplicated tomato course, two hand-rolled pasta courses in succession that demonstrate Tortelli's range, a single grilled fish, a sorbet that resets the palate, and a soft, gentle Italian dessert that is closer to a southern grandmother's kitchen than to a London pâtisserie. The whole thing runs about three hours and is, hour for hour, the calmest table in Knightsbridge.
This is the menu to book when you want to understand what Alba is doing, rather than just enjoying it. The à la carte will get you a great dinner. The tasting menu will tell you why Alba exists.
What to drink with it: the tasting menu has a paired wine flight which we recommend without reservation. If you'd rather choose, ask the sommelier for the Campania-Sicily run — they will be ready for you.
What Else To Order
Beyond the three signatures, Alba does small details extremely well: the bread (warm, properly seasoned, served with Sicilian olive oil), the burrata (correctly room-temperature, dressed with restraint), the negroni (built classically — orange peel, the right vermouth, not over-stirred). The seafood display by the open kitchen is genuinely a daily catch and worth a glance on the way in; whatever is sitting there is also what is being grilled in the kitchen that night.
Pace yourself. Order the linguine. Share the pizza. Book the tasting menu for your second visit. And do call ahead — Alba's evenings, particularly on Fridays and Saturdays, are increasingly full.
Alba is at 70 Brompton Rd, London SW3 1ER. The nine-course tasting menu is available evenings; à la carte runs lunch and dinner. Reservations via alba-ldn.uk.
