Bold move, Lupa. Very bold.
There’s already a glut of great Italian restaurants in London, and quite a lot of them happen to be right here in Highbury. The incomparable Trullo, for example, is just around the corner! But Lupa has something the others do not. Lupa not only promises ‘Roman comfort food’, but the slim chance of catching sight of its Very Handsome co-founder, the actor Theo James.
This is a ballsy offering of big, bold food, heavy with hearty guanciale
That man’s intense bone structure and dreamy eyebrows are not the only draws however. Carousel co-founder Ed Templeton is also behind this new opening, and in the kitchen is the extremely capable Naz Hassan, who we last encountered during his tenure as head chef of the much-missed Pidgin. Hassan has done time in some of London’s most esteemed kitchens, from high-end Indian at Bibi, supercharged steak at the Cut at 45 Park Lane, and non-specific Euro sharing plates at Crispin. And it’s evident from our first bite that such a gifted all-rounder hasn’t encountered any trouble turning his hand to Italian cuisine.
It’s a courgette flower, lightly battered, deep fried and stuffed with smooshy burrata, then draped with a fat anchovy and resting in a pool of its own green courgettey juices. Sure, it’s steep at £10.50 for a single courgette flower, but it sets the tone for the cavalcade of sturdy Roman flavours that are about to descend upon us. This isn’t a delicate menu of rural farm fare, but a ballsy offering of big, bold food, heavy with hearty guanciale that’s so salty it could feasibly replace the body of lost electrolytes during a heatwave.
A tomato carpaccio covered in a vigorously crispy pangrattato makes us instantly jealous of the life these pampered fruits have lived; baked in the sun and picked by caring nonnas. What bliss!
Pasta is equally punchy. Carbonara is the same gleaming yellow as Xmas advocaat, dotted with huge hunks of pork jowl and deeply, pleasingly creamy, while the cacio e pepe hums with the heavy duty heat of freshly cracked black pepper.
If you’re greedy, by all means get stuck into some secondi - the slow-roasted porchetta stuffed with apricot makes for a superlative swirl of meat, complete with enviable crackling, white the pan-fried cod somes served in a lake of butter. Perhaps most thrilling though is a dish of bitter leaves, drenches with a fabulously trashy honey-mustard vinaigrette.
We finish with a courageously savoury peach tart. Thinly sliced fruit on a bed of ricotta, which my dining companion says is ‘giving spanakopita’.
If the food is legit, so is the space, an old shoemenders turned tiny 28-cover room, a fitting facsimile of a cosy Trastevere osteria, minus - alas - the gaggle of beautiful people outside smoking cigarettes. Looks like there’s room for another great Italian restaurant in Highbury after all.
The vibe A lovely little trattoria with a glam crowd.
The food Hearty and powerful Roman-inspired comfort dishes.
The drink A short cocktail menu includes a frightfully potent fig leaf martini, while the menu of Italian wines is deft and assured.
Time Out tip The pasta dishes here are pretty sizable (and rich!) - meaning only the super hungry should attempt primi and secondi.