In the 1950s, Elizabeth David used her food column in British Vogue to introduce readers to a wondrous European ingredient: spaghetti. Cut to 2025, and the best Italian restaurants in London serve every conceivable variety of pasta, often made in-house, while British diners are familiar with everything from puntarelle to nduja, scamorza to bresaola. Of course, there’s the River Cafe, widely credited with transforming British gastronomy from its out-of-the-way spot on the Thames, and Bar Italia, a site of pilgrimage for Italian expats, where a vintage ’50s Gaggia coffee machine is kept going 22 hours a day. Then there are the relative newcomers around town, each with their own specialties to try: bistecca alla Fiorentina at Brutto, parmesan fries at Luca, sage butter gnudi at Campania… Below, Vogue rounds up the best Italian restaurants in London to visit now. Buon appetito.
Manteca
Plenty of restaurants are described as “buzzy”, but at Manteca – an Italian-inspired diner tucked in a corner of Shoreditch’s Curtain Road – the word actually feels apt. Think: young professionals clinking Negronis after work, big groups of friends chatting over cacio e pepe and ragu genovese and enthusiastic servers weaving between industrial-style tables while chefs hand-roll pasta and mixologists shake cocktails on full display.
Food-wise, the menu dances between rich and delicate, with citrusy salads alongside sumptuous beef steaks and sweet, meaty pappardelle. Their whole thing is “nose-to-tail” cooking, promoting a less wasteful approach to consumption, with a balanced variety of meats and small plates. To sum up: come for the melt-in-the-mouth pork chop and stay for the zesty Arancello (a recent addition to the drinks menu), or – my favourite – a bright, silky apricot sour.
EC2A
Wild garlic chitarra at Manteca
Anton RodriguezItalo
More a deli than a restaurant, Italo has been providing Vauxhall locals with the staples of la cucina Italiana since 2008, from dried porcini to fresh mascarpone. (Its owner, Charlie Boxer, is the son of cookery writer Arabella Boxer, aka Vogue’s resident food columnist for much of the ’80s). Expect a crowd at lunch – the sandwiches, made with Kennington Bakery bread, are worth queuing around Bonnington Square for.