There are restaurants in London doing more interesting things than Padella. There is almost nothing doing something this good for under £15, which is why a decade after it opened there is still a queue outside on a wet Tuesday.
It sits on the corner of Southwark Street at the edge of Borough Market, a narrow room with a counter running over the open kitchen downstairs and a menu that fits on a postcard. Pasta is made on site. The list changes with what is available. And the prices have stayed close to where they started: the cheapest bowl, tagliarini with dried chilli, garlic and pangrattato, is £9.50, and a 125ml glass of wine starts at £7.
What to order
The pappardelle is the order. We have had it with fennel sausage and it was the best thing we ate that year; the current menu runs it with beef shin ragù at £16.50 and it is just as good. After that, the ravioli of Westcombe ricotta and sage butter at £14 is the one people come back for, the pici cacio e pepe is £13.50 and the tagliarini with Dorset crab £16.50.
A warning we have earned the hard way. Because it is cheap you will be tempted to order across the whole menu, and you will end up spending more than you meant to and too full to enjoy the last plate. Two pastas between two people, one starter, and save the room for the tiramisu. That is the meal.
The queue, which is the whole problem
Padella does not take bookings and never has. What it has now is a virtual queue: scan the QR code at the door, or join through the Dojo app before you arrive, and they text you when a table comes up. That is a genuine improvement on standing in the rain, and it means you can put your name down and go and have a pint in one of the pubs around the market while you wait.
It does not solve the maths, though. Turn up after half seven on a Friday and your chances of eating there that evening are close to nil. Lunch is the easy shift, and midweek lunch is the easiest of all. If you want the counter seats over the kitchen, which are the best seats in the house, go early and ask.
Is it still the best pasta in London?
It holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand, it has spawned sites in Shoreditch and now Soho, and it remains the benchmark everyone else in the city gets measured against. Whether it is the single best is a fight we take up properly in our guide to the best pasta in London. What is not arguable is the value: there is no other kitchen in central London putting food of this standard on a table for a tenner.
The London x London Take: a decade in, Padella is still doing the thing that made it famous, at close to the price that made it famous, and that is rarer in London than any amount of innovation. The cooking would be five stars. The problem is getting to eat it, because the waiting is a genuine pain and there is no way round it except turning up at noon. Go at lunch, sit at the counter, order the pappardelle, do not over-order, and leave room for the tiramisu.
Rating: 4/5
Need to know
- Address: 6 Southwark Street, London SE1 1TQ
- Nearest station: London Bridge, three minutes
- Website: padella.co
- Booking: none taken. Virtual queue via the QR code at the door or the Dojo app
- Hours: lunch daily 11.30am to 3.45pm, dinner Monday to Saturday 5pm to 10.30pm and Sunday 5pm to 9pm
- Price: pasta £9.50 to £16.50, wine from £7 a glass
More in the area in our guides to Borough Market restaurants and London Bridge restaurants, and more cheap cooking worth queueing for in our guide to cheap eats in London.
“Ten years on, some of the best-value cooking in London. The no-bookings queue is the only thing holding it back.”
