Padella - London

Highly rated pasta restaurant, the queue can be tricky and can take some time. It was my first time there, felt the few dishes were too salty for us. Not sure if this is their usual or not. Good service and friendly staff.

Finally we managed to go to the famous and extremely busy Padella. We were served by Emma. Super nice and helpful who helped my wife to choose her main. The quality of the pasta couldn’t be better. Cheaper, for sure but better impossible. £13.5 and £14 for our mains you can see them in the pics) in my opinion are totally overpriced. Even with the current inflation). My wife really loved her pistachio pasta…. However, it looks like people doesn’t care about the overpricing because it is always full at anytime with a long queue. Olives me being Spanish) didn’t impressed me. The bread was brilliant. Same with the burrata. The amount of pasta varies between 100-150grs depending of the main. not a great portion for my pappardelle) Founders, Jordan and Tim British, not Italian) opened the first of 3 Padellas 5 years ago and it looks like it’s going pretty well. I am happy that finally I could manage to try what so many people were talking about. However, £74 for a quick lunch for 2 people, I would definitely will go to another place with a lunch set menu. Go and try by yourself though…

Food was delicious and really good price point for it. Will go back again and try their other pastas. Long wait times though as I couldn't book in advance for a Friday night just have to plan ahead. We went at 5:15pm and joined the virtual queue and were seated about an hour later. We just had drinks closeby in the meantime. I suggest joining the queue even earlier if you don't have time to wait, as I imagine it can be a 1 2 hour wait on a Friday.

Went early on a weekday lunch. You just scan the qr code in front of the restaurant to start queuing. We were no.10 when I got there 5 minutes after they open. It was totally worth the effort. We ordered 4 pasta and two affogato split between two. We were super full but every dish was just heavenly. They will tasted distinctly different and I loved the variety of pasta served. We cleaned our plats!

I don’t understand the rave of this restaurant. We joined the virtual queue and waited for about 35 mins. Had very high expectations as it was highly recommended by a friend. Ordered a beef and crayfish pastas that tasted really bland and had no flavour, can barely find traces of lobster in it. Burata was extremely delicious with the olive oil though, but other than that, it was a disappointment and wasn’t worth the £50. However perhaps being Asian, we’re too used to flavourful dishes.