The Best High End Italian Restaurants in London
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Italian cuisine is about simplicity, and we all know that simple doesn’t mean easy. In the kitchen, the simplest of things are the hardest to execute with excellence. Picture a velvety cacio peppe pasta, a homogenous carbonara sauce, or a Fiorentina steak cooked to perfection. High End Italian Restaurants in London are just the best places to find these dishes.
An excellent Italian restaurant is simple, with minimal design and an uncomplicated menu. Chefs work with traditional recipes and add their personal and modern notes to flavour and presentation. Here you will find some of the best examples. 10 venues that excel in their food, design, and relation to Italy’s casual and homey costumes.
Artusi
Artusi respects and celebrates the simplicity of Italian cuisine. They work with a menu that changes weekly and adapts to seasonality and the availability of fresh ingredients. The pasta is made daily, and wine comes from some of the best Italian regions and producers. They have a family-style sharing menu for large groups of eight or more people. You will feel like participating in a traditional Italian family meal.
Although the place might not look like fine dining from its decor and set-up, it is true to authentic Italian eating traditions, and that’s what matters after all. Minimal design and decor make space for intricate flavours and an intimate environment. White walls hold charcoal boards with the daily menu. Light wooden furniture reflects the sunlight that comes in from large windows in the front of the restaurant. In front of the open kitchen, a large table seats 18 people. It is where chefs serve daily dishes that are fresh and highly flavorful.
Start with artichokes with spinach, butter sauce and pine nuts. Savour spaghetti with leek, bottarga, and pistachio, or maybe grilled fennel with Violino pumpkin, bitter leaves and hazelnuts. Pair your meal with a wide selection of white, orange, red, and sparkling wines served both by the glass or in the bottle.
Bocca Di Lupo
Bocca Di Lupo is one of those places where you end up wanting to eat a piece of everything. Even if you weren’t hungry, to begin with. A small, humble, family-owned trattoria that cooks with heart and expertise in everything they decide to produce. Respecting traditional regional Italian cuisine, the restaurant has won many awards.
Exploring food and wine from across all 20 regions of Italy, they either assemble in-house ingredients or source them from the best Italian producers. Maybe try to get the Chef’s Counter seating when reserving a table. Comfy up on high stools in front of the open kitchen and watch the magic unfold before your eyes.
The menu at Bocca Di Lupo changes daily according to the ingredients’ availability and seasonality. Fried and cold cuts take over the appetiser menu. You’ll get classics like buffalo mozzarella with tomatoes and bail from Campania. Maybe olives stuffed with pork and veal from Rome. Order from the extensive list of pasta and risotto, like farfalle with red prawns, mussels and pistachio. Grilled and baked proteins are what follows – taste the roasted suckling pig with Tropea onions, white wine and bay leaves.
Murano
Murano‘s primary focus is quality of service, which granted the restaurant’s first Michelin star only four months after its opening. Murano is another of the most high end Italian restaurants in London. A distinguishable feature is making guests feel welcome and at home while still playing with luxury. Exquisite food and wine also played a big part in this achievement.
The heritage of the Murano cuisine comes from Italy, merging Italian culinary traditions with fresh products from the UK and the rest of Europe. The informal atmosphere of the restaurant brings “fun” rather than “fine” dining to the table. The meu, which allows diners to pick any number of dishes in any order they choose, complements the entertaining aspect of the venue. There are vegetarian and vegan menus available, as well as a set lunch menu.
Indulge in Italian wines that pair perfectly with your dish. Maybe start with the sea trout mi-cuit with watercress, pickled onion and oyster leaf. Follow up with a potato agnolotti with pecorino, guanciale and mint. Order from the fish or meat menu for the secondo piatto. Taste turbot with Tahitian vanilla, white asparagus, and pork crumb. Perhaps a lamb loin with romesco olives and piquillo pepper.
Legare
Legare is a neighbourhood restaurant focusing on Italian antipasti and fresh hand-made pasta. The wine list, which features natural wines from different regions and producers of Italy, accompanies the food and merges with its flavours and aromas. The menu here changes regularly, according to the season and the products available to craft beautiful dishes.
The compact menu offers classic Spuntini, like focaccia and olives, perfect for nibbling while talking over various glasses of wine. There are oysters and carpaccio with melon and fennel pollen. For the antipasti, maybe order the burrata with strawberries and Genovese basil. White peaches with thyme and sweet gorgonzola cheese are also an option. As for the pasta dish, go for the pici pasta, a thicker version of spaghetti, with a burro e oro sauce made with tomatoes, butter, Parmigiano cheese and chilli peppers. Finish off with some dessert and a digestive liquor.
The decor of the place resembles a wine cellar, with charcoal white concrete walls and compact spacing under a curved roof. The open kitchen, which is very casual and stands behind shelves of wine, glasses, and loaves of bread, is a show worth watching. The light wooden furniture is extremely simple, highlighting the informal energy of the place.
Lina Stores
What first started as a delicatessen selling fresh products from Italy eventually became a restaurant where you can eat intricate dishes prepared with those same ingredients. Handmade pasta, sauces made with authentic Italian vegetables, produce from trusted suppliers, and only the best can be found in Lina Stores‘ kitchen. Lina Stores has five locations around London: Marylebone, Soho, The City, and Kings Cross.
Antipasti, pasta dishes, proteins, and dessert make up the menu of all restaurants, each with its unique touch to decor and flavour. Find anchovies on top of grilled focaccia and covered with cultured butter, and later order the pea and ricotta ravioli with mint and pecorino. On the secondi menu, dishes are meant for 2-4 people – try the buttery market fish with fennels, green olive, garlic and rosemary. Vegetarian and vegan menus are also available!
All units of Lina Stores offer a spacious and bright environment, making you feel like you’re at a chic Italian market. The ocean green and white colour scheme on the walls and bar tiles pair with the dark wood and white furniture spread around the dining room. Sit at a barstool or a booth and catch up with friends over aperitivos, then shop at the delicatessen and take fresh products home.
Luca
Luca is an high end Italian restaurant in London that combines classic luxury with hip trends for young people. By doing so, it has managed to attract and satisfy the crowds of London while maintaining its posture as a grown-up, serious place. The restaurant serves fresh British ingredients, prepared with an Italian view and served beautifully and in creative ways (eat scallops served inside a giant seashell, and you will understand what we’re talking about).
Dim lighting shines over olive-green and terracotta seats surrounded by brick walls in the main dining room. But if you’re here for lunch, sit at the terrace and enjoy the sunlight while looking at olive and jasmine trees. It feels like you’re in the back garden of an Italian summer house in Tuscany. Try a classic Italian Negroni at the bar while munching on the house-famous parmesan fries.
There is a prix fixe menu where you allow the chefs to explore their creativity and serve you a four-course meal. The a la carte offers fresh pasta dishes like conchiglie with stracciatella, garlic, and pistachio pesto. Juicy lamb racks with garlic sauce and caramelised spring vegetables for your meat course, or maybe a halibut with smoked eel, courgettes, and vegetable minestrone. Pair your meal with some wine, and indulge in modern Italian food that will make you want to come back for more.
Manteca
Manteca is a high end Italian restaurant in London that focuses on hand-rolled plates of pasta, an in-house salumeria, and whole-animal butchery. They bake the bread over a wood fire, giving the typical black chars with a soft and chewy interior over crispy crusts. The space is small, and one may wonder how they can fit so many people inside without getting cramped, but it doesn’t happen — every inch is perfectly calculated, and customers and staff move gracefully through the dining room.
Light-coloured booths cover the sidewall, alongside chalky black bricks with small green bouquets of plants hanging in front, and behind them, you can take a glimpse of the kitchen and the action happening inside. The rest of the furniture, tables and chairs are spread across the dining room with no particular extravagance.
The menu avenges all the extravagance lacking in the interior design. Visitors praise every item, and everything is a “must try”. Pasta dishes come in two sizes, where you can order smaller portions or regular ones. The cacio e peppe, a house favourite, comes with crab meat that surprisingly does not deliver that seafood flavour people would expect. Instead, it complements the savoury aspect of the cheese and dances with its umami. The fried pork with apple mustard and the ‘nduja steamed mussels are other unique flavour combinations.
Trullo
Like most of the best high end Italian restaurants in London and the world, Trullo works with simple and seasonal food. With an Italian menu that changes by the day, everything is prepared right before arriving at the table, just like dinner at your nonna’s house! Hand-rolled pasta and meat cooked over a charcoal grill are part of what makes this restaurant so authentic and unique. Trullo works with sustainable and seasonable ingredients, and chefs know precisely where each product came from.
Taste Aberdeen Angus beef fillet carpaccio with horseradish crème fraîche as a starter. Then, move to the chilled almond soup with strawberries and aged balsamic. After that, for that perfect charred meat, go for the 42-day-aged Belted Galloway T-bone, which serves from 2-3 people. The house tartes are a blessed dessert, like the cherry and almond or the chocolate and salted caramel.
Trullo has a spacious dining room with lots of natural light with vintage wood boards on the floor. High white ceilings reflect the sunlight over the purple booths by the wall, and the tables are covered with white cloths. The place does feel like a laidback environment, but at the same time, it carries a sense of luxury.
Padella
Look through the window of Padella from the street, and you will see one of their chefs hand-rolling pasta. It is the perfect spectacle for those walking in search of a place to eat. And if you weren’t hungry yet, we guarantee you will be. Just watch for a while as he thins the dough into a perfect spaghetti shape or lasagne layer.
From the same owners as Trullo, this pasta bar was nominated as one of the top 100 restaurants in the UK in 2017. The menu follows the classics of Italian cuisine: simple, delicious. Changing its offer daily, the restaurant follows the availability and seasonality of ingredients. Taste a rocket and mint salad with Moscatel wine dressing as an antipasto, for example. Order a juicy burrata with Le Ferre olive oil. Try a pistachio pesto over a housemade fettuccine or crab, chilli and lemon over a tagliarini plate for your pasta dish.
The inside is as casual as a high end Italian restaurant in London can get. Sit on one of the bar stools or a small table by the window. The charcoal white walls brighten up with the natural light that comes in through the glass. Air ducts can be seen on the ceiling.
Gloria
Gloria is an Italian restaurant that takes you back to Capri in the 1970s. And that’s about decor, because the modern methods of preparation and presentation of dishes remind you that you’re now in the future. This is a trattoria that runs all day long. They serve dishes that make you feel like you belong to the sunny Neopolitan days by the coast.
The menu is filled with Italian classics, all homemade and with highly fresh ingredients from small producers in Italy. Because of that, the dishes change every month, following the seasonal availability of products and respecting their time to shine. Try the pesto heart burrata and the osso buco ravioli to understand what we’re talking about. Maybe go for one of the many Neopolitan pizza options. For example, the Brexitalia Truffle comes with black truffle cream, fior di latte, mushroom carpaccio, and Parmigiano cheese. Here, traditional Italian dishes meet new methods of preparation and novelty flavour additions.
The decor is a boho expression of old Capri. In one room, fine Persian rugs are on the floor. Mirror ceilings with bright golden lights shine upon colourful chairs and marble tables. On the other, large oval booths surround small tables like those found in a seaside coffee shop, with natural light coming in.
High End Italian Restaurants in London
Italian food thrives in its simplicity. It is the job of every high end Italian restaurant in London to praise this characteristic and reproduce uncomplicated classics. Always with that unique house touch to them. The restaurants on this list all work with seasonal ingredients and do a great job delivering tasty, fresh, and authentic Italian food.
