One of my favourite things about popping into London is the chance to get dinner with one of my favourite people, Milly. Today, we’ve taken a recommendation from Jeremy (a genuinely comforting move) and gone for Osteria Angelina, a restaurant that combines Italian and Japanese cuisine - an absolutely winning move in my books, as two of the best to do it. It is totally unclear just how much we are meant to order from a large number of categories, each with limited options. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I’m begging for someone to explain the concept to me. We make our best guesses, and our waiter doesn’t pull a face, so that seems to be fine. A slice (or, realistically, slab) of the Hokkaido milk bun starts us off, with some gorgeous burnt honey butter and jam, each element in this something you’d expect to be sweet but actually works really nicely as a savoury starter. We pick a crudo and a fritti, just one of each, as our first proper course. I’m sadly talked out of the tuna by Milly, but it’s in favour of thinly sliced scallops, with roe and a blood orange jus, floral and biting and elegant all at once. The fried courgette flower with a miso-infused ricotta is a revelation, delicately fried rather than stodgy, a hint of walnut setting it off. Our main course consists entirely of pasta, two very different dishes - one, a veal and rabbit ragu over pappardelle, crisped over with breadcrumbs and cheese and topped with a soy-cured egg yolk, thickly rich but well-textured, an unmistakable presence on the table; the other, a interwoven cylinder of tagliolini coated in a light matcha sauce (and then drowning in it for good luck), with a quinelle of raw tuna (I won out in the end in some way) and caviar. Where the ragu was thick, this is thin, not over-egging the pungency of the matcha but instead letting it almost float there. We don’t even get to the grill or sides before being full enough to only be able to handle dessert. A chocolate tortino - or for the less civilised amongst us, a chocolate fondant - with a soy butter gelato is divine; I’d have maybe, if I am really, really quibbling, asked for a little more cakeiness over meltiness, but I certainly wouldn’t turn a second or seventeenth down. Delighted to find that their low/no-alc selection includes the Feral 0% wines that Alasdair and I had at Bulrush last year. As ever, a wonderful catch up over excellent food. I’ll be returning, I’m sure.