Italian Restaurant

Italian Restaurant

Ida restaurant, a family run restaurant in Queens Park, north-west London serving beautiful authentic Italian food. Amazing value for money.

Ida restaurant-Queens Park, London - The Tiny Italian

Walking down a quiet Victorian terraced street in Queens Park, North-West London, I approach one of my new favourite Italian resturants in the city, the wonderful Ida.

Owned by husband and wife team, Avi and Simonetta who both have Italian roots in Tuscany and Le Marche, Ida opened in 2007 with neither of them having any restaurant experience.

However, Avi, Simonetta and family persevered through all the hard times and in 2014 Ida was awarded Time outs ‘Best local restaurant’ which was an amazing triumph.

Named after Avi’s mother, Ida, who taught him to cook, the restaurant is open 6 days a week (closed on Sundays) and the team prides themselves on serving customers home made meals rather than over thought pretentious dishes which I feel has become the norm amongst a few new London Italian eateries.

The first time I came across Ida, was when I attended an evening hosted by Taste film, (a monthly experience that pairs a classic film screening, while the audience enjoys a menu inspired by the film).

http://thetinyitalian.com

Reviews and related sites

GourmetGorro: Radici, Islington, London Italian restaurant review

Review analysis
desserts   food   ambience   drinks  

I’ve heard talk that whenever Francesco is in the kitchen at one of his restaurants you’re guaranteed a good meal.

Meatballs (£7.50) had a disappointingly dense processed texture but combined well with a spicy tomato sauce and a good dollop of mash.

The light take on the dish saw beef ragu and grana padano cheese piled on top of thin layers of pasta.

Sweet calf liver (£18) was served with fragrant sage butter and crisp leaves, smooth mash and rashers of salty pancetta.

A calabrese pizza (£12), slathered with fiery ‘nduja, light tomato sauce and mozzarella, was very good too.

Il Pampero review: An Italian restaurant in Belgravia dishing up ...

Review analysis
food   menu   drinks  

Il Pampero’s was varied, challenging –think squid ink grissini and salty focaccia – and unmistakably fresh.

It was good to see that il Pampero’s elegant location and polished interiors had not detracted from that feel.

White clothed tables and mid-century modern style leather chairs surround the focal point bar, all decked out in warming earthy tones and dark greens.

The stand out dish, however, was undoubtedly the main course: a whole salt-baked cod, whose thick white exterior was expertly cracked open at the table, to reveal fresh, flaky fish beneath.

Il Pampero is open for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Vasco & Piero's - Italian Restaurant, Soho London

Review analysis
food  

We are a traditional Italian restaurant, which moves along with the times and is loved by the local community.

We are not here to wow, just serve good Italian food based on our Umbrian heritage.

We change the menu twice a day, and it always includes a few of our home made pasta dishes.

In general, there are no time limits on tables.

We have paintings from Giampaolo Tomassetti, an artist from Umbria and we present guest artists from time to time.

review of London Italian restaurant Edera, written by Andy Hayler in ...

Review analysis
value   drinks   food   desserts  

I once read that the quality of an Italian restaurant is in inverse proportion to the number of black and framed photos of celebrities on its walls, in which case some amber warning lights should have been going off in my head here: there was a picture of Clark Gable and a host of other movie star photos duly hanging in the dining room.

It included labels such as Castelfeder Vom Stein Pinot Bianco Sudtirol 2015 at £37 for a bottle that you find in the high street for £11, Ca’ del Baio Valgrande Barbaresco 2014 at £62 compared to its retail price of £29, and the lovely Antinori Tignanello 2014 at £160 for a wine that will set you back £79 in the shops.

These truffles were from Umbria, and were the cheaper winter truffle (tuber brumale vittadini) rather than true black truffles (tuber melanosporum vittadini) though I will say that they had at least some fragrance when freshly grated, suggesting that these were good quality and reasonably fresh (truffles lose their flavour within days of leaving the ground) within their type.

The bill came to £100 a head with a good but not excessive bottle of wine, though that did include the costly truffle risotto.

If you ordered three courses and coffee and shared a moderate bottle of wine then the bill would come to about £60 each, which is quite a lot objectively, especially when you can eat quite nearby at the better l’Amorosa for less money.

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

Review analysis
food  

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.

Palatino: 'Better than in Rome' – restaurant review | Life and style ...

Review analysis
location   food   staff   drinks   menu   desserts  

You don’t have to fly to Italy to sample Roman cooking at its simple best – just catch a cab to Palatino in Old Street Palatino, 71 Central Street, London EC1V 8AB (020 3481 5300).

Meal for two, including drinks and service: £60 to £90 The late AA Gill was once so infuriated by the quality of the food he was served at a London Italian that he left the restaurant, hailed a cab to Heathrow, jumped on a plane and a few hours later was eating the real thing in Rome.

If I tried something like that at Palatino, chef Stevie Parle’s Roman-themed venture near London’s Old Street, expenses would get me no more than a Boris bike to an Italian caff in Highbury.

The great Roman dish of saltimbocca – literally “leap into the mouth” – is precisely as it should be, the veal beaten out then laid with sage leaves and wrapped in prosciutto, before being sautéed off in a sweet marsala-based sauce.

Palatino feels like a companion piece to Radici, Francesco Mazzei’s relaunch of the old Almeida site in London’s Islington.

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