Our waiter is impressed by our ambition in taking on two plates of pasta each. I’m worried we haven’t ordered enough
Despite masquerading as moderately intelligent and successful adults, with kids and pets and a shiny degree apiece, my friend and I can’t get our heads around the name of Stevie Parle’s new restaurant. I keep calling it Pastaccio, and wondering why I’m being redirected to web pages about nuts, while she’s nailed the spelling, but frets about the pronunciation: “I want to say Pasta-eeoh,” she texts, “but then I think he’s basically called a pasta restaurant Pasta, which would be a bit, you know, obvious.”
Fortunately, neither of us studied Italian: Pastaio (“pas-tye-YO”) means pasta maker, because that’s what they do here. Like the wildly popular Padella, this is a temple to that most democratic of Italian foodstuffs, made, the menu informs us proudly, “every day right here by our pastai”. 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. It’s clearly not a place that takes itself too seriously: we’ve come armed with a pram, there’s a spaniel under the table opposite (what can I say? Dogs seek me out) and a prosecco slushy machine churns quietly on the bar, serving up pure joy with a stripy straw.
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