Flirty oysters, monkfish to marry-but it's not true love at this Soho Italian

FORK AND TALK

- David Ellis

Doppo 

33 Dean Street, W1D 4PW. Meal for two including wine and service, about £170. Open Tuesday to Saturday, 5.30pm — 10.30pm (12.30pm Friday and Saturday), and for lunch Thursday to Saturday, noon — 3pm; 020 7183 2100 

ARE you familiar with the sport Shag, Marry, Kill? Three candidates — customarily people, though the rules don’t dictate it — must be shuffled into one of the three lanes, no overlap permitted. The more alike the nominees, the harder the distinction, the more fun is had. Oh, you get it. You probably think you invented it, you minx.

Anyway, my pal Clare Finney recently advanced the idea that were people to apply the form to everyday situations — shopping for shoes, say, or picking a movie — they might more easily decipher what they truly want, which either makes her an organisational genius or a kind of perverted Marie Kondo, depending on how you look at it. But come on, can you think of a better way to land on somewhere to lunch?

So we found a test bed — behave — on Dean Street. Doppo, hitherto unknown to us and hence neutral, became our Switzerland of restaurants, although presumably it isn’t profiteering off looted Nazi gold. Neutral to look at, too — two neat squares over two floors of plain white walls, parquet floor, not flash but with a certain quiet elegance.