Letters on the Table at Latango, New Delhi

A few months after its opening, Latango already feels unusually assured. Not settled or complacent, but confident in what it wants to be. From the moment I stepped inside on my visit, that intent was made clear. The staff broke into spontaneous applause—not a gimmick, but a moment of genuine warmth that immediately dissolved the city’s traffic hum and retuned the evening. It was joyful and rather unexpected, setting the tone for what would unfold as a meal shaped as much by hospitality as by craft.

Located in the heart of New Delhi at Nehru Place, Latango describes itself as an all-day European bar, but the phrase undersells the ambition. The gargantuan space leans into restraint: concrete and metal softened by light, mirrors catching reflections, and a glass monolithic bar that acts as a focal point without dominating the room. There is a palpable sense of movement here, but never rush. Conversation travels easily across tables; the open kitchen draws you in without turning dinner into theatre. It is a space that encourages staying longer than planned—a quality Delhi restaurants often promise and rarely deliver.

A Room That Sets the Pace
In the kitchen are two Italian chefs whose combined experience anchors the menu. Joe Stanchi, trained in Naples and deeply fluent in pizza culture, brings an instinctive understanding of dough and heat. Roberto Blondi, whose résumé includes some of the world’s most exacting kitchens, brings quiet precision. Over the course of the evening, both chefs checked in, guided choices, and ensured my guest and I were looked after without any sense of performance. It felt personal, not curated.

The food follows a clear philosophy: classical European technique, interpreted through travel and lived experience, without slipping into novelty for its own sake. The tenderloin carpaccio arrived first, sliced finely and dressed with Cipriani sauce. It was a deliberate nod to Harry’s Bar in Venice, and the reference was well-earned, I’d say! It was everything a good carpaccio should be—clean and balanced, with the beef allowed to remain the star.

From there, plates began to move between cuisines with ease. The ajo blanco scallops were handled with care, pan-seared and set against a chilled almond sauce, sharpened by tomato reduction and lifted with roasted nuts. It was Mediterranean in spirit, but open to interpretation, the textures doing most of the talking. The grilled pork belly followed, presented as ribbons stacked onto fluted skewers, glazed lightly and paired with a bell pepper sauce that brought a certain brightness to the fatty richness of the protein.

Plates That Travel, Techniques That Anchor
One of the pleasures of Latango is how comfortably it accommodates dishes that would feel out of place elsewhere. The Atlantic crab California gunkan (still rare on Indian menus) was neatly constructed, sweet with crab and restrained with rice, letting ingredient quality speak sans any excess seasoning. Croquetas de bacalao came crisp on the outside, creamy within, deeply savoury without oiliness. These were dishes that seemed to reward attention.

If the kitchen speaks in measured sentences, the bar writes in paragraphs. The cocktail menu, titled Letters from Two Worlds, frames each drink as a correspondence between artists across cultures and time. It could easily tip into pretension, but instead remains whimsical and thoughtful. My drink of the night was the Cubist Negroni, a deconstructed take inspired by a fictional exchange between Picasso and Amrita Sher-Gil. Tequila replaces gin, Italian amaro and Aperol provide bitterness, and citrus binds it all together. It was a drink that rewarded slow sipping and reflection.

Pizza, inevitably, is taken seriously here. A slice of Diavola was brought out mid-meal, hot from the oven and handed across by the chef himself. The dough had integrity, the nduja sausage heat was controlled, and the balance between spice, fat and acidity reminded me why simplicity remains such a difficult thing to execute well. The mushroom and truffle risotto that followed was deeply comforting, with rice cooked al dente and truffle used as an accent rather than a blunt instrument.

A Bar That Thinks, A Kitchen That Listens
The omelette Café de Paris was one of the more surprising pleasures of the night. Rich, indulgent and unapologetically French in spirit, it arrived generously filled with crab and dressed with a sauce that leaned into butter and herbs without collapsing into excess. It was the sort of dish that rarely survives modern menu editing, and its presence here felt quietly rebellious.

Dessert closed the meal on a mostly high note. The panna cotta, served with seasonal fruit, was delicately flavoured but texturally a touch granular, the only moment where execution didn’t quite match intent. It was a small misstep in an otherwise cohesive evening. A scoop of fragrant lychee ice cream quickly restored balance, light and aromatic, leaving a cleaner impression.

What stayed with me most was not a single dish or cocktail, but the rhythm of the evening. Service moved with awareness rather than choreography. The applause at the door was not an isolated flourish; it was an early signal of a restaurant that understands hospitality as emotional intelligence rather than performance.

Latango is not trying to reinvent European food, nor does it lean on nostalgia. Instead, it offers fluency in technique and in service. A few months in, it already feels like a place that knows exactly what it wants to say, and says it with clarity.