If London is to lean heavily into pasta by delivery, the pasta being delivered needs to get better. I won’t name names but I’ve tried out some of the brands: the little shops flogging pots to go, over the counter or by way of courier. Mostly the pasta is overcooked and the sauces only marginally better than premade variations from Waitrose. There is limited depth. I just don’t really think it works all that well.
If you think about it, ordering a box of pasta on an app and tracking it for 20 minutes while it congeals, the sauce cools and condensation taps away at the plastic lid, is actually quite unseemly. Delivery culture is all the rage in London. It might be ideal for pizza, curries and egg fried rice but it is less so with pasta. If it wasn’t overdone before it is by the time it arrives at the front door.
We have embraced pasta in London this past decade. The food at Bocca di Lupo is as rewarding today as it was at the very beginning — it might be the best modern Italian in the capital right now — and there’s Manteca, Padella, Flour & Grape, Trullo, Burro e Salvia, Artusi (a Peckham favourite of mine soon to open a second site in Soho) and the lunch time pasta they do at Pophams, which deserves greater fame. All of these and more are brilliant, affordable places to eat. Visit them.
It isn’t difficult to understand why this ramping up of quality, and why pasta’s upward trajectory in London has led to an interest in delivery alongside. The comfort of a bowl of rigatoni with a meaty ragu is up there with life’s greatest pleasures. Anyone having had a tough day will be imbibed by penne with vodka sauce, or, a personal favourite of mine, farfalle with bacon, cheese sauce and peas.
Go to a restaurant or get in the kitchen. Don’t order something soggy. Or, should I just say it? Sure. Screw you, Pasta Evangelists.
Delivery is about convenience and ease. The thing is, pasta takes minutes to cook. So do simple sauces, if not a proper bolognese. And given Britain has been taught to cook basic Italian by now — Delia, Jamie, Nigella et al — it’s quite lazy to order pasta in a box. Few of us could whip up a laksa and so on a cold autumn day, I understand why someone might get some to their front door to be enjoyed in front of Slow Horses. Likewise ramen or sushi. But pasta? Come on, you boil a kettle and you’re halfway there. If Britain can cook anything, it’s a decent pie, roast dinners, and spaghetti with mince. If we’ve shot ourselves in the foot, so be it. It’s a national dish. I’d say the same about chicken tikka masala but I’m not sure we’re quite there yet with the spicing.
Then there’s the cost. These boxes via brands on apps cost £10 or more, closer to £15 half the time, and they might be generous but if there’s a food delivery line, it’s carbonara. You cannot proficiently send it out in cardboard.
So, yeah, on World Pasta Day, go to a restaurant or get in the kitchen. Don’t order something soggy. Or, should I just say it? Sure. Screw you, Pasta Evangelists. There, I named names after all.
