Queuing for a restaurant is all the rage these days in London. You’ll see people lining up for even an hour, outside in the cold during winter, or outside in the rain, just for a restaurant that (in my opinion) cannot be worth it because no restaurant is worth an hour of waiting in the cold or rain. And if it is worth it, I’d just go during an off peak time instead of wasting an hour of my life. I almost always plan so that we make reservations in advance or we go to places with less than a five or ten minute wait. But I made an exception with Padella.
First, Padella doesn’t take reservations, and second, it almost always has a line during peak hours. So if you want to go, you’ll have to go during an off hour, or wait in the line. I would’ve gone during an off hour, but we happened to be in the area (Borough Market) just around dinner time and we’d been intending to try Padella for so long. We joined the long outdoor line, and even though the hostess said it would be 40 minutes to an hour, I had a feeling it would go a lot faster. And it did, luckily. 15 minutes later we were already seated and ordered shortly thereafter.
I don’t eat pasta often. Not because I don’t love it, but because if I’m going to actually go out and order pasta, it has to be fresh, homemade, good quality pasta with scintillating sauces that pair perfectly with the type of pasta offered. It has to be cooked to perfection and the pasta to sauce ratio must be perfectly executed. Otherwise, I could make the dish myself with a box and a jarred sauce at home and it would taste nearly just as good.
I waited a long time to find the right pasta restaurant in London to go to and Padella is that place. It is really just spectacular. Padella is actually a two story restaurant – ground and basement. I didn’t realize that there was a basement at first and thought the line would never move fast enough, but as we were just zipping through the line, I realized there had to be seating elsewhere. And there was. The basement is not a dingy, dark place. It’s actually a lovely place to sit, so don’t be disheartened if you get seated there. We were seating on the ground floor. The ground floor is nicely done. It has a huge open kitchen and a long seating area that surrounds the open kitchen where customers dine on high bar stools. It’s not ideally comfortable because there’s no back, but you get to watch them make the food right in front of you. There are at least five or six chefs in the kitchen cooking all the pastas to order and you can see them in action. They work quickly and efficiently, but they don’t compromise on quality.
We weren’t seated surrounding the open kitchen, but at a different row of high tables opposite the open kitchen. It was a bit more private and quiet. Our waiter was really nice and insisted on honest feedback, which is rare. We ordered three pasta dishes from the menu to share, without customizing a single one. The pastas and sauces are paired perfectly, so there’s no need to mess with them in any way.
All pastas homemade, all sauces homemade, every ingredient is top notch, execution is fantastic.
Pici cacio e pepe – cacio e pepe is my favorite non-tomato based sauce and when made well, it is just delicious. Cacio e pepe (literally, cheese and pepper) is a butter-based cheese and black pepper sauce. Generally, the cheese is a combination of grana padano, parmesan, and pecorino. There’s an ample amount of black pepper added into the mix. It’s essentially a high-end mac & cheese sauce. And I love a good pici pasta. Pici is very similar to bucatini (a fat spaghetti) and this one was cooked perfectly al dente. This dish won best dish of the year at the London Restaurant Festival just a few weeks ago and for good reason. The pasta was cooked perfectly, great texture, the sauce was delicious (substantial, but still light for a sauce made only of butter and cheese), and the ratio of sauce to pasta was spot on. Delicious.
Pappardelle with 8-hour Dexter beef shin ragu – pappardelle is wide, flat pasta (like a ribbon) and is often paired with a meat sauce because its width holds the meat well. We were originally between this and their ravioli with marjoram butter, but the waiter recommended this one instead. Seems like he was right as this was fantastic (though the other one may have been delicious as well). Plus I think it was better to go with the meat dish as it’s harder to make yourself and ravioli is more common. The pappardelle was cooked perfectly and the beef shin was so soft, moist, and delicate. It was a thin tomato based sauce, not heavy in any way, and just barely coating the pappardelle.
Tagliarini with slow-cooked tomato sauce – the simplest of all the dishes we ordered as it’s based off the traditional spaghetti and tomato sauce dish, but elevated. Tagliarini is just a thinner tagliatelle. This was cooked the least al dente of the three dishes we tried and it was very fitting to cook it that way. The slight softness of the pasta went perfectly with the slow-cooked tomato sauce and made the dish more comforting. The tomato sauce was perfectly tart, super flavorful, and with chunks of tomatoes. The taste was amazing, but the sauce itself was too oily, leaving puddles of oil on each plate. The flavor was so good that the excessive oil was highly unnecessary and did detract a bit from the overall quality of the dish. Nonetheless, we ate the whole thing and we passed this feedback to the waiter who happily accepted it (as he’d wanted us to be honest to begin with!).
There was not a speck of pasta that went unfinished. I have the utmost faith in this place and I would blindly try any of their pasta dishes. The quality is really unrivaled and I cannot imagine the place not thriving for years to come. And the place is so unpretentious and laid back, unlike any other Italian restaurant serving pasta of this quality. The prices are unbeatable for what you’re getting. I say run to Padella as fast as you can and order one of everything on the menu!
