Luca, the new restaurant from The Clove Club gang, is a beauty. In an early-19th- century listed building in Clerkenwell beside Hat & Mitre Court, the facade painted a Howard Hodgkin black-green above bottle green glazed tiling frames windows with net café curtains hanging from brass rails at half-mast. Could these windows represent the Italian lens through which the owners — Isaac McHale, Daniel Willis and Johnny Smith — claim British seasonal ingredients will be viewed?

Once past the unassuming exterior the space unpeels and reveals, starting with a commanding bar around which there is casual seating leading on via a semi-open kitchen to dining areas flanked by private spaces — one a garden, one a pasta kitchen — before arriving at floor-to-ceiling glazing that functions as a conservatory for outdoor planting.

Oak-planked floors and boat-bent ceilings are fitted with watchmakers’ precision, pale blue and olive green leather upholstery soothes and Art Deco shades on overhead lights invoke a timeless sense of design that you might associate with Milan. Spendy is a word that also springs to mind. And our meals may go some way, I feel, to settling the invoices of Alexander Waterworth Interiors.

Because Italian cooking is such a familiar favourite from pasta and pizza onwards there is an assumption that it is a doddle to produce. “Britalian”, the gawky word that has been bandied about by its founders to describe the approach at Luca, sadly proves that, like Brexit, it is not that easy. ]

Mincing up fat-free end-of-season grouse (the little birds can breathe easy from the 10th) to fill ravioli then making a sauce with dilute potato and whisky is a notion that is more appealing in a consciousness-raising session than on the plate. Beating pheasant breasts into thin escalopes before coating them in breadcrumbs as a theoretically gamey — but in actuality tasteless — manifestation of Milanese makes you think: “Why not use veal, like the Italians are inclined to do?”

Head chef Robert Chambers has worked at Locanda Locatelli and The Ledbury as well as at the RAC Club and apparently he received culinary inspiration from an Italian nonna, which seems the sine qua non for London chefs embracing Italian food — think Ruthie Rogers and Angela Hartnett. His menu is divided into the four courses germane to a traditional Italian meal and if you add a pasta — typical price £14 — to a main — typical price £24 — you have the makings of a big bill on your hands.

Who could resist sea robin crudo at this time of year? Beats perched on a twig. Raw gurnard, as it turns out to be, flecked with chilli and marjoram is dressed with Capezzana olive oil, often lauded as one of the world’s best. Clementine mentioned in the dish description is another Christmassy element.

Although it is only offered on the bar menu, it is worth ordering (for £4) the outstanding tough-crusted loose-textured bread served with resoundingly green Fontodi organic olive oil.

Turnip tops mixed with “smoked cod’s roe bottarga” — bit of a tautology there — and sweet butter make a nice healthy start, as does a shaved fennel and pear salad using a raucous mix of leaves dotted with toasted nuts.

Pasta assemblies are less alluring. The name of whole-wheat pennucce must derive from the word “penance”, to which is added buckwheat, garlic and kale. Spaghettini with Morecambe Bay shrimp and mace butter is limp first time around and at the second meal (ordered by a friend who won’t play by the rules) wet.

In Italy the main course will often be just a piece of protein served proudly unadorned on the plate. A wedge of lemon is sometimes admitted. Cornish lamb chops at Luca arrive resembling an English main course of meat and two veg plus some rosemary breadcrumbs that lack edge. Fillet of Wiltshire trout has not only samphire but also a trail of herb butter, potato terrine and broccoli purée to embroider it. “The fish has been served wrong side up. The chevron side is not the presentation side,” says the trainee chef accompanying us. You learn something every day.

Among the desserts — the nicest is hazelnut ice cream with salted caramel sauce — is an offer of five ages of Parmesan Vacca Bianca Modenese. A tribute, presumably, to Massimo Bottura at his three-Michelin-star Osteria Francescana in Modena, this display is just five little nuggets (some rather sour) of hard cheese, no parade of textures and temperatures. It is £21 badly spent.

The best dishes tried are picked from the bar menu. It is to that part of the operation I’ll be returning. Potatoes cacio e pepe are ribbons of al dente potato wreathed in a cheesy, peppery sauce rivalling the much-loved pici wearing the same dress at Borough Market’s Padella.

Parmesan fries seemingly based on a stiff béchamel are dusted with devilled spices. I like the sound of smoked ox tongue bun with horseradish and walnut sauce. That with a negroni.

Mon-Sat noon-11pm. Sunday lunch noon-5pm. Restaurant meal for two with wine, around £160 including 12.5 per cent service

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@Fay_Maschler

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