ANNDining

The bones at ANNDining are Italian — pasta rolled in the kitchen, pizzas built with real intent, a Caprese kept close to the classic — but the cooking rarely stays put. A single dinner can travel from crab and lobster croquettes to a Japanese sweet potato under creamy yuzu, from Parisienne gnocchi to confit pork belly glazed in Korean barbecue with pickled daikon and roasted carrot. The restaurant takes its name from Ann Street, the downtown London address in the Richmond Row area that it shares with the sourdough-and-pizza project it grew out of.

The menu is built as an argument for sharing. First bites run rich and precise — AAA tenderloin tartare with egg yolk, crème fraîche, chive and charred crostini; Mountain Oak gouda gougères piped with cheese espuma and prosciutto; burrata with romesco, charred almond and focaccia. The pastas are the quiet centre of gravity: braised rabbit pappardelle with smoked bacon, fennel and vermouth butter; tagliatelle bolognese built on braised beef cheek and pork; tiger shrimp bucatini brightened with artichoke and lemon zest; a tomato and stracciatella radiatori scattered with oregano furikake. The gnocchi shows the other register — cremini and oyster mushrooms, thyme cream, peas and sunchoke, comfort without giving up the polish.

From the Land & Sea side come walleye with PEI mussels and celeriac purée, a seven-ounce hanger steak under roasted bone marrow butter and chimichurri, and a Lumina lamb strip loin in a Dijon and herb crust with peas and pesto. Grilled octopus, one of the kitchen's clearest statements, arrives with pickled tomato, tomatillo crema, almond relish and red chilis. Dessert keeps pace — a strawberry rhubarb tart with poached rhubarb and toasted meringue, blueberry lavender panna cotta, sticky toffee pudding in rum caramel. Across all of it the through-line is a kitchen cooking from a point of view rather than a template, familiar enough to settle into and varied enough to keep a table ordering.

Pizza is where the restlessness shows most plainly, and it is no afterthought. The Soppressata comes with fontina and hot honey, the Prosciutto with gorgonzola cream, shaved pear and fig, the Elote crusted in sesame and finished with corn cream, tomatillo cream and tajín; there is even a loaded potato chip pizza that treats the form as a dare. The same instinct runs through the vegetables — battered brussels sprouts in miso bagna cauda, asparagus risotto with cured egg yolk and Guns Hill cheese, sweet potato with puffed quinoa and toasted hazelnut. Vegetarians find real footing here, not a single grudging option.

Cocktails are part of the visit rather than a short add-on. The list reaches for garden, fruit, tea and spice across a base of sake, gin, tequila and rum, with a Ruby Rhubarb among the signatures, and it gives the evening a drinks-first opening without turning dinner into a bar. The backstory sits underneath all of it: ANNDining opened in 2022 as the sit-down expansion of a venture that began with bread — a long-developed sourdough that first anchored an adjacent Ann Street pizzeria before the dining room took shape next door. Local reporting has followed the same team across the block, which explains why the pizzas carry as much conviction as the pastas, and why takeout, run largely through that pizza kitchen, stays a working part of the operation.

Use it the way it is built to be used. The features change around the edges with the seasons, dinner runs Wednesday through Saturday, and reservations are the smarter move on a weekend. The room rewards a group willing to order across sections and stay a while — the best seat is the one that treats croquettes, a pasta, a pizza and a shared dessert as one unfolding meal instead of a race to a single main. On Ann Street, the address and the appetite happen to share a name.