One of our favourite dishes at Trullo, the Italian restaurant in Highbury, is the 8 hour Dexter beef shin ragu served with pappardelle. It’s offered as a starter but we like it so much that we’ve sometimes had it as a main course – it’s certainly filling enough and feels like the main event. And now the team behind Trullo – Jordan Frieda and chef Tim Siadatan – have opened a new restaurant, Padella, south of the river. All the pasta will be freshly made in full view of anyone passing by the restaurant’s window in Borough Market, shortly before being served. And the glorious thing about a restaurant devoted to serving pasta is how cheap it is – main courses range from £5.50 to £9.80 which gives one licence to be greedy and have more than one, frankly. The best way to eat here is probably to dispense with starters (although you might want a salad from the antipasti list) and order 3 pasta dishes between two. We liked the squid ink tagliarini with Essex mussels, wild oregano & chilli as well as a light ravioli of ricotta and sage butter and the tagliatelle with Italian fennel sausage ragu. We’re also interested to see the promised seasonal variations to the menu. This is probably not the place to spend a whole evening. It is, however, one of the few places in London where you could manage to eat for £15 a head without having a burger. You could even add a negroni into the bargain.
Padella
