It's not very often that you get to review a restaurant with two floors with different menus, great live music in a state-of-the-art venue that has it's own architectural fan club. Just where do you start?

Caponata is a Sicilian restaurant, Osteria and bar with a live music venue called The Forge. The Osteria (definition; inn or small country restaurant) offers an informal, bite sized, selection of Italian fayre and in the more exclusive and intimate upstairs restaurant, freshly prepared Southern Italian food takes precedence.

For a lazy sunday afternoon I made the right choice, deciding to dine where the action was, downstairs next to the musicians in the Osteria bar. We were served a number of Sicilian tapas style offerings from the deliciously fresh Prosciutto Toscano, Salame, Mortadella, home roasted ham and toast £9 with a rich artisan cheese board £9 to the recommended Sicilian favourite Arancini - a risotto ball filled with a variety of combinations: beef and peas ragout, spinach and mozzarella or saffron and seafood from £2.50 a go.

We followed this with Porchetta, pork belly with spices and toasted bread. Added to that a light, tangy fennel and orange salad £3 with home made Sicilian fennel sausage £6. Wonderful. Note to self: its breakfast menu is worth a visit alone; eggs, fennel sausage, streaky smoked bacon, mushrooms, slow baked tomato and toast £8. There's also a belt tightening selection of home made foods, pastries and highly regarded gelati. Decisions, decisions...

Front of house is run seamlessly by Luca, the perfect host, who delights in your enjoyment of his native cuisine. We loved his advice with the olive oil, leaving out the balsamic for a touch of salt which really lifted the bread dipping experience to a mini starter in itself.

His other suggestion of a classic Negroni; gin, campari and vermouth really helped prep us for the assembly of meats, cheeses and specialities that adorned our table, unusually presented on blocks of wood.

My partner, an authority on the great British roast was delighted it made the menu as an alternative sunday option at £12.

She went quiet for some time (guys take note this could be the answer), then broke the silence with a huge thumbs up. The presentation was as considered as the interior design. I wonder if they have an architect in the kitchen as greens were assembled vertically inside a sculptured Yorkshire Pudding. It disappeared very quickly, that's the best endorsement, believe me. The beef was described as succulently tender, diminishing all those memories of two and half hour chewing sessions after ill advised pub lunches.

We accompanied the food with an easy going red before finishing with chocolate cake and one scoop each of pistachio and cinnamon ice cream.

The finale was a digestif suggested by Luca. Limonella di Sicilla, fresh and invigorating. Spot on.

The music was just a perfect accompaniment. Nikki Iles' piano sound reverberated effortlesly through the building aided by carefully considered acoustics and a wonderful interior layout. The Forge is proving a very special venue with seating up to one hundred people, providing the Osteria with great live music, (free to Caponata diners on tuesdays and sunday afternoon). Please check the program carefully before going http://www.forgevenue.org/whats-on/. During the day the restaurant is partitioned from the music area and some nights, dance lessons take place too.

For the Sicilian owners this has been a three year labour of love. In partnership with Burd Haward they've help realise a truly engaging piece of architecture. It has a northern european sensibility; modern and minimal, punctuated by organic wooden forms, high ceiling space and flooded with natural light. The two-storey interior wall planted with ferns and creepers to create a living green wall is an inspired touch.

This is the sort of mesmerising place you stumble upon in New York, patronised by the great and the good and you pinch yourself if you get a table. Caponata is in London. In fact Delancey St, thirty yards from Camden High Street, NW1. It's really got it going on. I genuinely struggled to find fault. This place is already on its way to becoming a 'must visit' for food and music lovers alike. Book a table... while you can.

http://www.caponatacamden.co.uk/