Cacio e Pepe

Cacio & Pepe

The idea behind the restaurant, ‘’Cacio & Pepe’’ is a combination of an Italian woman’s life dream and a manager with a passion for Italian cuisine and wines served with professionalism and accuracy in an homely restaurant.

Enrica Della Martira was born into a very famous family in Florence in 1980.

Enrica went on to attend one of the most prestigious universities in Milan and kept her passion for cooking at home for her friends, who were her favourite judges.

Enrica’s passion for Italy, its Mediterranean ingredients, and wine are a constant inspiration.

Together, Enrica and Mauro were excited to start the journey of ‘’Cacio & Pepe’’ and deliver quality Italian food with professional and accurate service to London.

http://www.cacioepepe.co.uk

London Reviews: Harry's Dolce Vita – The Foodie Diaries

The latest: an Italian restaurant in Knightsbridge reminiscent of Italy’s La Dolce Vita period, spanning the ’50s & ’60s.

Spinning off from Harry’s Bar (a private members’ club in Mayfair), Harry’s Dolce Vita is helmed by Richard Caring’s Caprice Holdings – the formidable group at the fore of some of London’s most fabulous establishments, from Annabel’s to 34 and Scott’s.

Situated rather conspicuously on Basil Street in Knightsbridge (right behind Harrods), the restaurant is as sybaritically-stylish as you’d expect of Caring (superlatives apply in spades); but delivers substance and a simply sublime sense of satisfaction too… Walking in on an icy Monday afternoon, I  find the restaurant alive with a warm chatter as dapperly-clad waiters deftly zip around the narrow passage, topping up champagne glasses and shaving white truffles all over heftily-portioned plates.

I’m trying not to fawn, but really – it’s been an impeccably-faultless afternoon thus far… Of course, there’s no dearth of other Dolci at Harry’s Dolce Vita with a dedicated dessert menu for drop-in’s during the afternoon.

I don’t regret ordering it for a one-time novelty appeal – oohing and aahing as it cracks apart to reveal the ensemble cast – but I’m likely to stick to Italian classics on my next revisit… … And I have no doubt that I’ll be revisiting Harry’s Dolce Vita soon and often.

Pastaio, restaurant review: London's newest Italian is 'a childish ...

It's 6pm on a Saturday and I am in a restaurant eating pasta with cheese sauce for dinner.

We're in Pastaio, the newish restaurant from Stevie Parle, the latest proprietor to look at the two-hour queue for pasta with cheese sauce at Padella, in Borough Market, and think 'I'll have a bit of that'.

The short list of pastas, worked through on three separate visits, all earn their place, but particularly the cacio e pepe and the agnoli, which are silky little meat grenades, like unfurling dim-sum, brimful of pork and game.

Cacio e pepe, as anyone who's attempted it at home in recent years will attest is much easier to get wrong than right, which is why many Italian restaurants don't bother.

The tomato sauce pasta, only £6.50, would be plenty for lunch.

Pastaio: Review

While good Italian food was hardly unheard of in London – or even much of a rarity – it’s fair to say the quality and number of restaurants willing to put the time and effort (and space) into handmade pasta has shot up in the recent past.

Ruth Rogers and Rose Gray’s grand perch on the banks of the Thames in Hammersmith changed everything about how the British saw Italian food; out went lasagna and macaroni cheese and chicken pasta bake (shudder) and in came creamy burrata drizzled in olive oil, plates of expertly-selected beef carpaccio, and – of course – wonderful freshly made pasta: ricotta ravioli with sage butter, crab linguine, veal ragu tagliatelle.

And as befits the name of his new restaurant (Pastaio means “pasta maker”), front and centre stage is some of the best handmade pasta we’ve tried, kneaded, pressed and extruded daily on custom-build wooden worktops that fold neatly flat against the wall when it’s time for service.

Having fallen completely in love with it on our first visit it’s a delight (not to mention somewhat of a relief) that the ‘grouse, rabbit and pork agnoli’ was still completely scene-stealing on a return trip: a perfect match of silky-soft sheets of fresh pasta, a rich game-y filling heady with herbs, and a butter-sage dressing to bind it all together.

Conceived, built and executed perfectly, it’s right up there with the very finest pasta dishes in London (and I include the River Café in that assessment) and worth anyone’s time and money.

Padella

But if you want to keep it traditional, swap the cheese in the ingredients list... Serves 4 1 batch of pici dough 160g unsalted butter 100g parmesan, finely grated 4 tablespoons freshly ground black pepper 1 teaspoon lemon juice In a large saucepan, bring water up to the boil and season with salt to resemble mild sea water.

Drop the pici in water and cook for 5–6 minutes.

Meanwhile, add the butter, black pepper and a splash of pici water to a saucepan on a medium heat and then turn down to a low heat until they emulsify (melt into each other).

When the pici is cooked, remove it from the water and add to the saucepan with the butter and pepper.

Serves 4 375g white bread flour 180ml water 1 tablespoon olive oil pinch fine sea salt Add the flour to a mixing bowl and make a well in the middle.

Fay Maschler reviews Enoteca Turi: Some masterful pasta, but come ...

In 1962 The London Daily Sketch ran a feature claiming that on one particular night the following people ate dinner at Soho’s La Trattoria Terrazza: Ingrid Bergman, Leslie Caron, Danny Kaye, David Niven, Gregory Peck, Laurence Harvey, Sammy Davis Jr, Michael Caine, Julie Christie, Terence Stamp, David Bailey and Jean Shrimpton.

I’m eating Italian food in SW1 attempting to explain to my young companion the influence on London’s restaurants of Mario Cassandro and Franco Lagattolla, founders of what became known as The Trat.

Mario and Franco opened more restaurants — eventually selling out and becoming millionaires — and their staff, having grasped the formula, left to open copies, many of them located in SW3 and SW1.

New to this area is Enoteca Turi, which last year, after 25 years — and with no connection to Mario and Franco — moved from Putney to Pimlico Road.

It was hearing about the arrival of chef Francesco Sodano, also originally hailing from Naples with experience in various eminent restaurants in Rome, that made me visit — that and remembrance of good times past with Giuseppe Turi’s deep-rooted Italian wine list — here is an enoteca not a trattoria.

Grace Dent reviews Padella: A fine little find for proper but casual ...

So when Trullo in Islington, an excellent neighbourhood Italian, announced plans to launch Padella in Southwark, I was extra-thrilled.

For six years Trullo has remained elegantly hectic, largely due to the reliably fine standard of its fresh tagliarini, ravioli and tagliatelle and a chipper front-of-house who do things properly.

I hesitate, when explaining chef Tim Siadatan’s ethos, to use the much-strewn foodie term ‘fresh and seasonal’ but in Trullo’s case it is roaringly true.

The wine list is good; in fact, at Trullo I formulated one of my great life mantras: Remember, Grace, there is no extra prize for finishing all the wine in a tasting menu.

Padella has the sleek simplicity of one of my other great loves, Barrafina on Frith Street, where you sit up at the bar and watch the chefs make simple things brilliantly, plus the homespun touch of Honey & Co on Warren Street.

Classics Revisited: Hush

When was the last time I ate at Hush, I wondered as I read the press release announcing the restaurant’s 18th anniversary.

With a sick prickle of horror I realised it was my 23rd birthday, shortly after Hush opened in 1999 – a lifespan long enough to have raised a child and packed them off to university.

As it is, I’ve been a very absent presence in the restaurant’s life.

If its present fine fettle is anything to go by, Hush should last at least another 18 years.

Padella, London SE1: 'I hoover up wriggly worms of pici pasta like a ...

‘If they do embark on an expansion plan, anyone lucky enough to welcome a Padella to their neighbourhood should put out the bunting’ Among the many enraging things about the internet’s obsession with #eatclean #detox #loveyourself and all that sad, orthorexic hashtaggery, the one that makes most steam issue from my lugs is the idea that a spiralised courgette can substitute for pasta.

When I arrive nice and early (there have been queues since opening), they’re stuffing fresh pasta on marble counters.

After five years, this is their first new venture – I don’t want to speculate about rollouts, not least because I’m not sure anyone could afford the marble, but if they did embark on an expansion plan, anyone lucky enough to welcome a Padella to their neighbourhood should immediately put out the bunting.

Then an absolute barnstormer, barrelling straight to the top of my desert island dishes: those pici (pronounced “peachy”), fat, wriggly and dense Tuscan noodles that are close cousins to udon, served “cacio e pepe”, aka bathed in pungent pecorino romano and oodles of freshly milled black pepper, all emulsified by a splash of the cooking water: simple things (the pasta doesn’t even contain eggs) working utter, head-turning alchemy together.

The pasta is equally fine, but the slow-cooked sauce is flat and pallid, the meat watery and tired; well, eight hours is a long shift.

Pastaio, London W1: 'I never thought I'd see the day where I enjoyed ...

The seating is communal, the decor bright and vaguely industrial (Parle has said he wanted a “canteeny feel”) and the food simple: eight antipasti and seven pasta dishes, with nothing above £11.

Dogs seek me out) and a prosecco slushy machine churns quietly on the bar, serving up pure joy with a stripy straw.

We’ve made an executive decision to stick to the classics: rigatoni with slow-cooked tomato sauce and parmesan; casarecce with pesto; the much-photographed bucatini cacio e pepe; and a bonus helping of malloreddus (“little calves” in Sardinian dialect, apparently, although they look to me more like caterpillars) with sausage ragù.

Having made a serious study of cacio e pepe on a recent holiday, Pastaio’s looks way too wet, but once we’ve established that neither of us is too proud to use our fingers, it’s difficult to regret the amount of sharply cheesy, boldly peppery sauce left on the plate after we’ve hoovered up the last bouncy noodle.

But for a simple, satisfying plate of pasta in a congenial environment just yards from Europe’s busiest shopping street (and priced at 75p less than the mac’n’cheese at the chain pub around the corner), I reckon it’s pretty near perfect.

Cacio & Pepe | Restaurants in Pimlico, London

This relaxed Italian restaurant in Pimlico translates as 'cheese and pepper'.

Obviously it's a good combo but the name's taken from a Roman pasta dish that, traditionally, should be as simple as it is delicious – just pasta, cheese and pepper.

It's on the menu here.

It's joined by dishes such as burrata with fresh tomato cream and grilled courgettes, seared veal tonneé with beetroot and green bean salad, seared Fassona beef with quail egg and grilled tiger prawn with pumpkin purée and crispy pancetta.

And that eponymous dish?