Il Posto, London

OK, so the food's important, but it's the hustle, bustle and drama that makes a neighbourhood Italian restaurant worth its bread-sticks, says Terry Durack

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Second helpings: More neighbourly Italians

Bring me some mineral water," said my favourite Italian restaurateur, Rinaldo Di Stasio. The bottle came, and was placed on the table. He grimaced in pain, as if his heart had been broken. "I don't mean just bring it," he cried to the waiter, arms flailing, creasing his expensive white linen. "I mean DO SOMETHING with it." Honour was satisfied when three bottles of San Pellegrino came back cradled in an avalanche of crushed ice in an enormous silver epergne. "Thank you," he said simply.

Over the past 10 years Rinaldo has taught me a lot about Italian restaurants in general, and Italian restaurateurs in particular – the love-hate relationship with his diners, his kitchen and himself; the dancing on the marble bar; the locking-up in the office of anyone who disagreed with their bill; the military inspection of waiters' fingernails before service; the game of over-booking and then juggling tables to avoid boredom; the manic insistence on consistency and continuity from the kitchen.

I realise now that the seductive joy of his neighbourhood Italian restaurant in seedy St Kilda, a seaside suburb of Melbourne, is what I seek in every Italian dining experience. You can catch a glimpse of it in Dinner Rush, Bob Giraldi's frenetic new movie, filmed in his own New York restaurant Gigino, in all its clattery, steamy, high-pressure glory. Giraldi gets it – the gritty tension in the downstairs kitchen, the choreographed theatrics of the upstairs dining-room, the diners neatly layered in the middle like besciamella in lasagne.

But SoHo and St Kilda are operas of sorts, where one expects dead gangsters in the loo and naked women walking in off the street. By comparison, Il Posto is in genteel Holland Park, which tends to have a cleansing effect on seamier restaurant life. There's a low-key mix of diplomatic American families and well-mannered English couples, and any sense of hospitality is muted by politeness and shyness.

Il Posto distances itself from the clichéd Italian restaurants of yore with its light, modern, split-level rooms with squashed-people art on the walls. Italian flows like Chianti between the floor staff and the only thing missing is the owner, who can't be a restaurateur when he is too busy in the kitchen being the chef.

Andrea Gazzabin has cooked at both Riva at Barnes and Cibo near Olympia, so it is not surprising to see a lighter, modern hand applied to the Italian classics. Don't expect your same old, stock standard spag bol or veal 10 ways. Instead there is scottadito (lamb cutlets with roast potatoes), tagliati manzo (grilled sliced beef), mezzaluna pasta filled with crabmeat and penne with a sauce of osso buco.

Il Posto's generosity is rare, and welcome. A basket of breads includes ciabatta and crisp Sardinian pane carasau, while hot little bruschetta or pizza come to the table while you order. The generosity continues into the first courses, which are probably too large for comfort. Flat, thick, green ribbons of "lasagne" are served with fresh asparagus and tiny zucchini flowers (£8.50) as a harbinger of spring, although the pasta should be finer for the delicate vegetal nature of the sauce.

Crostone di quaglie e salsiccie (£5.75) promises polenta in the sub-titles. It is a rather large dish of quail and runty little sausage bits on a bed of grilled bread, with no polenta in sight. Meaty and moreish, it would make a good main course – especially if it came with the polenta.

There are mild-mannered complaints at the next table when the roast potatoes promised with the lamb cutlets are replaced, unannounced, with sauerkraut. Then my spaghetti with langoustines (£12) turns up, a goodly sized platter of al dente spaghetti coated in a nice oily emulsion, topped with two delicate, sweet langoustines and two free-loading prawns – boring and chewy – which give the distinct impression that they are there merely to make up the numbers.

At least a roasted young chicken with lemon and garlic (£10) is a roasted young chicken, all golden brown and rested, sitting on ribbons of zucchini and mossy furls of spinach (what a divine vegetable when just-wilted) and scattered with rosemary and thyme and soft, nutty garlic cloves. It's a terrific dish, made even more so by a bottle of Sassella Riserva (£23), a velvety, long-flavoured red from Lombardy in the north of Italy.

The best dish of the night is a trio of chocolate (£5.50) for dessert that is the work of a genius, the ice-cream impossibly smooth, the chocolate and almond cake ethereally light, and the creamy budino totally luscious.

Il Posto is OK, but it could be really good. It needs more Vincenza and less Holland Park; more character and less manners; more casalinga and less parsley scattered over the rims of big white plates; more opera and less pappy pop music in the air. I want a Rinaldo Di Stasio on the floor, giving the kitchen a hard time; making sure the roast potatoes aren't replaced by sauerkraut and the polenta by bread; hurrying things up; getting things moving; dispatching the longish waits be-tween courses. I want them to not just bring the mineral water, but to make something of it. Then what is now a dinner dawdle would be a dinner rush.

Il Posto, 6 Clarendon Road, London W11, tel: 020 7727 3330. About £85 for two, with wine and service (set lunch £12.50 and £15). Open daily 12-3pm, 6-11pm