It’s Late 2022 and Central London Is Still Absolutely Wild for Fresh Pasta

Officina 00, the much-loved east London Italian restaurant and pasta workshop, which opened its first site in Old Street, Shoreditch in 2019 is all set to open its second restaurant — on Whitfield Street in Fitzrovia on 15 November. It puts paid to the notion that Londoners will ever tire of the notion of new pasta restaurants opening in their city.

And yet, owned and run by Elia Sebregondi and Enzo Mirto, alumni of modern Asian restaurant Roka and the cult-Thai claypot spot Kiln, Officina 00 Old Street is a little different, having earned a loyal following up to and through the pandemic years for innovative takes regional Italian pastas, such as the cacio e pepe-stuffed fried raviolo; a nutty, bitter cavatelli with Padron peppers; rich corzetti with wild mushrooms, fennel sausage, and tarragon; and a trademark linguine with egg yolk, clams, and lemon.

Unlike at Old Street though, there will be a smoker, fryer, and grill, meaning that the Fitzrovia restaurant can “broaden its repertoire of dishes with a wider range of cooking techniques,” a spokesperson said, adding that there would be “refined, regionally-inspired plates, influenced by the cooking traditions of Naples,” the southern Italian city from where Sebregondi and Mirto moved to London.

Pastas so far announced will include: sweetcorn ravioli with girolles, pea shoots. and parmesan; ink raviolo with egg yolk, crab, turmeric butter, and mizuna; anolini with smoked shiitake broth, soy, and confit garlic butter; and casarecce with red and yellow datterino, black olives, capers, chilli, and parsley.

The restaurant is keen to emphasises that this fresh pasta is no ordinary fresh pasta and will be made using a fine-milled flour specially made for the restaurant from voguish farm-millers Wildfarmed, which provides the wares for the likes of Jolene and Willy’s Pies. It has earned its own reputation for its progressive no-till method of farming. Mirto said the flour was “more workable, retains more nutrients and has an earthier taste. We can’t wait for our guests to try it.”