The best pasta in London
79 places
Al Dente
£Handmade pasta made in front of you for under £15, which is why the Goodge Street room fills with students at lunch and solo diners at night.
Anima e Cuore
£A Camden Town room with a reputation well ahead of its prices and its decor.
Artusi
££Peckham dining room doing classically based seasonal cooking with hand-made pasta, at prices well below its central equivalents.
Ave Mario
££Big Mamma's Covent Garden room, done as an eighties throwback. Neapolitan pizza, all-homemade pasta and T-bone fiorentina.
Vast and deliberately theatrical - the group books out well ahead and the rooms are loud by design.
Bancone
££Watch the pasta being rolled at the counter, at prices well below the Michelin Guide average.
Bancone
££Watch the pasta being rolled at the counter, at prices well below the Michelin Guide average.
Bancone
££Watch the pasta being rolled at the counter, at prices well below the Michelin Guide average.
Bancone
££Watch the pasta being rolled at the counter, at prices well below the Michelin Guide average.
Bancone
££Watch the pasta being rolled at the counter, at prices well below the Michelin Guide average.
Bancone
££Watch the pasta being rolled at the counter, at prices well below the Michelin Guide average.
Barbarella
££Big Mamma's Canary Wharf room, done out as a 1970s Cinecittà film studio and named after the Jane Fonda film - T-bone steaks and filled pasta under a lot of glitter.
Opened June 2026. Steps from the Canary Wharf DLR and Jubilee platforms, and a few minutes from the Elizabeth line.
Burro
££Named by both The Infatuation and Time Out, and one of the few Italian openings to reach two independent guides quickly.
Café Murano
££Angela Hartnett's everyday counterpart to Murano - the same kitchen thinking at a third of the price.
Sites in Covent Garden and St James's. The pasta is made fresh at least twice a day.
Campania & Jones
£££Cooking from the Campania region in a converted dairy near Columbia Road, with pasta made by hand every day.
Close to Columbia Road flower market, so Sunday is a different proposition from the rest of the week.
Canteen
££A Portobello Road room added to the Michelin Guide in 2026, in its first year.
Carlotta
££Italian-American rather than Italian - pasta alla vodka and whole roasted fish, in a plush retro dining room on Marylebone High Street.
Casa Felicia
££A Queen's Park neighbourhood Italian picked up by Time Out and named a finalist in The Italian Awards.
Cecconi's
£££Soho House group's all-day Mayfair room behind the Royal Academy - wraparound windows, striped marble, white-jacketed service.
Serves through the day, from egg-white omelette to lobster spaghetti.
Chucs Mayfair
£££Eight tables of 1950s Riviera glamour on Dover Street, from the clothing brand of the same name.
Very small - eight tables - so booking matters more than the walk-in-friendly rooms elsewhere on this list.
Circolo Popolare
££Big Mamma group's Fitzrovia room, wall-to-wall bottles and a ceiling of greenery. Booked out well ahead.
Como Garden
£££Interiors modelled on the gardens of Lake Como, with handmade pasta and small sharing plates.
Dalla
££One of the Hackney rooms driving the current wave of London Italian cooking away from the centre.
Daphne's
£££A Draycott Avenue fixture since 1964, and still the Chelsea room people book for a long lunch.
Eataly
££Three restaurants, a market of Italian ingredients, a cafe, a takeaway counter and a cookery school, all in one building beside Liverpool Street. Terra has a two-metre wood-fired grill.
A venue rather than a single restaurant - the format varies by which counter or dining room you use. Useful as a wet-weather or with-children option in the City.
Elephant Hackney
££A Clapton neighbourhood Italian that Time Out rates among the city's best.
Flour & Grape
£Bermondsey Street pasta-and-wine spot; short menu, low prices, long queues.
Gloria
££Big Mamma group's deliberately over-the-top trattoria, with a menu that changes every month.
Il Gattopardo
£££Massimo Pasquarelli - Abruzzo-born, a decade under Alain Ducasse, previously executive chef at the Ritz-Carlton Singapore - cooking classic Italian on Albemarle Street.
Sharing is encouraged and portions are generous. Three ways to sit: the main room, the light-filled terrace, or the crudo bar. The £20 Pasta & Vino counter offer makes a Mayfair Michelin-listed kitchen unusually reachable.
Italian Greyhound
£££From the Open House Group founders; local-trattoria spirit in a more polished contemporary room.
Jacuzzi
£££Four storeys on High Street Kensington, and the most seafood-led of the Big Mamma rooms - local fish, Italian caviar, fresh pasta.
The group's grandest London site. Four floors, so ask which one you are seated on.
La Tua Pasta
£Fresh pasta cooked to order at a Borough Market stand, with sauces that change with the season.
Market trading hours only - closed when Borough Market is closed.
Langosteria London
££££The Milan seafood group's first London site, inside the Old War Office - spaghetti with clams and sea urchin, and prices to match the address.
Lardo
££A London Fields room with a wood oven, open since 2012 and still on the lists.
Legare
££Opened 2019 by Jay Patel (ex Barrafina) and chef Matt Beardmore (ex Trullo), in the warehouse streets by Tower Bridge.
Neighbourhood Italian in the historic Shad Thames warehouse quarter.
Lina Stores
££The mint-green Brewer Street deli since 1944, now with restaurants attached.
Fresh pasta counter and deli; the restaurants came much later than the shop.
Lina Stores
££The mint-green Brewer Street deli since 1944, now with restaurants attached.
Fresh pasta counter and deli; the restaurants came much later than the shop.
Lina Stores
££The mint-green Brewer Street deli since 1944, now with restaurants attached.
Fresh pasta counter and deli; the restaurants came much later than the shop.
Lina Stores
££The mint-green Brewer Street deli since 1944, now with restaurants attached.
Fresh pasta counter and deli; the restaurants came much later than the shop.
Lina Stores
££The mint-green Brewer Street deli since 1944, now with restaurants attached.
Fresh pasta counter and deli; the restaurants came much later than the shop.
Lina Stores
££The mint-green Brewer Street deli since 1944, now with restaurants attached.
Fresh pasta counter and deli; the restaurants came much later than the shop.
Lina Stores
££The mint-green Brewer Street deli since 1944, now with restaurants attached.
Fresh pasta counter and deli; the restaurants came much later than the shop.
Lina Stores
££The mint-green Brewer Street deli since 1944, now with restaurants attached.
Fresh pasta counter and deli; the restaurants came much later than the shop.
Lina Stores
££The mint-green Brewer Street deli since 1944, now with restaurants attached.
Fresh pasta counter and deli; the restaurants came much later than the shop.
Lina Stores
££The mint-green Brewer Street deli since 1944, now with restaurants attached.
Fresh pasta counter and deli; the restaurants came much later than the shop.
Lina Stores
££The mint-green Brewer Street deli since 1944, now with restaurants attached.
Fresh pasta counter and deli; the restaurants came much later than the shop.
Locatelli at The National Gallery
£££Giorgio and Plaxy Locatelli's return after Locanda Locatelli closed, on the mezzanine of the Sainsbury Wing. Handmade pasta is the reason to go - the cappellacci stuffed with peas in particular.
80 seats. Runs on gallery hours, so dinner is early: 11:30-19:30 Sun-Thu, to 22:15 Fri, to 20:15 Sat. Bar Giorgio on the ground floor does espresso and maritozzi for a shorter stop.
Luca
£££Italian cooking through British produce, from the Clove Club team.
Manteca
£££Chris Leach and David Carter's nose-to-tail Italian with hand-rolled pasta and a salumeria on site.
Whole-animal butchery feeding a menu of house-cured salumi and hand-rolled pasta.
Mercato Metropolitano
£Italian-founded food hall with more than forty traders, heavy on pizza, fresh pasta, arancini and fritto misto.
A venue, not a restaurant - the traders inside change. Six minutes from both Elephant & Castle and Borough.
Mercato Metropolitano
£Italian-founded food hall with more than forty traders, heavy on pizza, fresh pasta, arancini and fritto misto.
A venue, not a restaurant - the traders inside change. Six minutes from both Elephant & Castle and Borough.
Mercato Metropolitano
£Italian-founded food hall with more than forty traders, heavy on pizza, fresh pasta, arancini and fritto misto.
A venue, not a restaurant - the traders inside change. Six minutes from both Elephant & Castle and Borough.
Motorino
£££Luke Ahearne and Stevie Parle call it London-Italian rather than Italian - the distinction is the point, and the cooking earns it.
Mucci's
££Every starter is £10 and every main £20 - one of the first London restaurants to build its whole menu around fixed pricing by course, rather than a time-limited offer.
Owner Giuseppe Mucci introduced the 10/20 pricing so regulars could order without watching the bill. Menu runs from cicchetti through pasta and pizza to steak and fish. Terrace seats around 50. At the World's End end of King's Road, a long walk from any tube - the King's Road buses are the practical way in.
Murano
££££Angela Hartnett's Mayfair dining room, starred within four months of opening in 2008.
Named after the Venetian glass-making island. Northern Italian cooking in a formal Mayfair room.
Noci
££A short, frequently changing pasta menu drawn from across the Italian regions, at prices well below the central equivalents.
Ombra
££Named for the Venetian term for a small glass of wine. Fresh pasta, seasonal vegetables and organic wine by the Regent's Canal.
Ornella
£££Milanese cooking on Wilton Way from the team behind Roman-influenced Lupa in Highbury - a butter-yellow corner site done simply.
Osteria Angelina
£££Itameshi - Italian cooking through a Japanese lens - with eight fresh pastas made in a glass-walled corner of the dining room.
Sister to Angelina in Dalston, but a different format: Dalston runs a set kaiseki tasting menu, Spitalfields is a la carte and faster. Executive chef Usman Haider oversees both.
Osteria Vibrato
£££A compact Soho osteria from Charlie Mellor with a 300-bin list of natural and biodynamic wine - Italian at its backbone, French alongside it.
Padella
£A short menu of hand-rolled pasta at low prices, which is why the queue exists.
Original site opened in Borough Market 2016; now also Shoreditch and Soho, where limited bookings are taken.
Padella
£A short menu of hand-rolled pasta at low prices, which is why the queue exists.
Original site opened in Borough Market 2016; now also Shoreditch and Soho, where limited bookings are taken.
Padella
£A short menu of hand-rolled pasta at low prices, which is why the queue exists.
Original site opened in Borough Market 2016; now also Shoreditch and Soho, where limited bookings are taken.
Padella
£A short menu of hand-rolled pasta at low prices, which is why the queue exists.
Original site opened in Borough Market 2016; now also Shoreditch and Soho, where limited bookings are taken.
PaStation
£Fresh pasta under a tenner in generous portions, near Tottenham Court Road. Built a following online rather than through the guides.
Popolo
££A narrow Rivington Street room doing Italian and North African small plates from an open counter.
River Café
££££Michelin-starred simplicity on the Thames, where Jamie Oliver and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall both trained. The terrace tables are the ones everyone wants.
Informal in atmosphere, upmarket in cooking; the riverside seats book furthest ahead.
Rosina
££££Adam Byatt spent two decades building a modern British reputation and then opened an Italian restaurant on the corner of Wandsworth Common.
Sale e Pepe
£££Serving the same classic Italian menu off Sloane Street since 1974 - the kind of room that stopped being built decades ago.
Sale e Pepe Mare
££££Ligurian coastal cooking at The Langham, carrying over the original Sale e Pepe's cacio e pepe finished tableside in a cheese wheel.
Santi
££East Village's own Italian rather than a Westfield unit, doing pizza and pasta for the people who actually live in the athletes' village.
Sette
££££Knightsbridge Italian at the top of the market, and one of very few genuinely ££££ Italians left in London.
Sorella
££Robin Gill's Clapham room - the team behind The Dairy - cooking the Amalfi Coast through British produce.
Sparrow
££Spaghetti with pistachio pesto, lobster linguine, spicy vodka rigatoni.
Spring
££££Skye Gyngell's dining room in the New Wing of Somerset House - a nineteenth-century drawing room in blonde wood and blush, under a porcelain petal installation by Valeria Nascimento.
One of the few rooms on this list where the cooking is cited as often as the setting.
The Dover
£££Italian-American cooking on Dover Street, in the mould of a New York supper club.
Theo Randall at the InterContinental
£££Theo Randall spent fifteen years running the kitchen at The River Cafe before opening this Park Lane dining room.
Hotel dining room, so it keeps longer and more reliable hours than most of the independents on this list.
Tiella
££A trattoria run with the sensibility of a pub - strangers talk to each other, and the polpette recipe is a family one.
Trullo
£££Tim Siadatan (ex St John, Moro) cooking a frequently changing seasonal menu of hand-made pasta and charcoal-grilled meats.
Highbury trattoria, long regarded as one of London's best neighbourhood Italians.
Vegan Yes
££Chef Mauro's Florentine cooking and Dr Min's Korean heritage on one vegan menu since 2016 - toppognocchi puts rice cakes and gnocchi in gochujang passata.