Restaurants have a lot on their plate – our custom is more precious than ever
Three Holloway Road businesses are offering good value in these difficult times
Thursday, 16th January — By Tom Moggach
Berto Pasta – various shapes, handmade every day
FOR a cheap night out, it’s often pizza or pasta – a safe bet on every high street. But even these prices can now leave you spluttering.
At a Pizza Express in Covent Garden, for example, the American Hot costs a whopping £18.25; an Italian restaurant around the corner charges £32 for their handmade fettuccine. Thankfully, there are still plenty of places to find good value.
In Holloway Road, Berto Pasta and Zia Lucia have got it covered – specialising in both pasta and pizza. The two restaurants are adjacent and run by the same owners.
When I first visited Zia Lucia in 2016, it was their only branch. Now they manage 11 across London.
The original concept involved four choices of dough – including wholemeal, gluten-free and one jet black from charcoal. This obsession with wheat has informed the pasta menu, too, which riffs on various pasta doughs and pasta shapes, all handmade every day.
The owners recruited a pasta obsessive called Berto, an expert in heritage grains, who popped over from Italy to teach their chefs how to make maccheroni, fettuccine, tonnarelli and tagliatelle.
Recent innovations at Berto Pasta include a pasta bar in the centre, from where you can watch their chefs in action.
We popped in for dinner and loved their maccheroni, cooked al dente then slathered in a rich tomato sauce cooked with spicy nduja and nuggets of pork sausage meat. The secret ingredient? A dash of vodka – a retro pairing that is back on trend. This gorgeous dish cost just £12.
Other new dishes include their cheesy cacio e pepe, £13, made with tonnarelli pasta and finished – with a dramatic flourish – by the waiter who swirls the cooked pasta inside a whole wheel of hollowed-out pecorino.
Another favourite is the truffled carbonara, £16, unveiled with a billow of cherry smoke at the table.
The menu at Berto Pasta also includes focaccia, whole burrata cheeses with various toppings and an array of dips, including blue cheese and a homemade pesto.
A few doors down, you will also find Sambal Shiok, a Malaysian restaurant famous for its curry laksa.
Here a large and steaming bowl of excellent prawn laksa will cost you £20.
Does that feel too much? The owner, chef Mandy Yin, has been outspoken over recent years in explaining the financial pressures faced by restaurants from a toxic combination of Covid, inflation and government policies such as rises in the minimum wage. Yin reckoned that she makes just 80p profit on each laksa once you factor in her costs.
In truth, all three of these restaurants offer good value in these difficult times – and our custom is more precious to them than ever.
Berto Pasta
155 Holloway Road, N7
020 7052 3893
islington@zialucia.com
www.berto.uk
Zia Lucia
157 Holloway Road, N7
020 7700 3708
islington@zialucia.com
www.zialucia.com
Sambal Shiok
171 Holloway Road, N7
020 7619 9888
info@sambalshiok.co.uk
www.sambalshiok.co.uk
