5 /5 Nicola Boccadoro: Don Luigi deserved a glorious review since the first time I entered in it, which was more than 5 years ago, but this very long time has reinforced my opinion like granite. The short verdict is that in 5 years they have never got a pizza wrong, or a dish which was not finely delicious and full of love and quality. But this restaurant deserves much more than a Tik-Tok slogan, it deserves some deep thoughts.
This review follows a dinner with my wife and my son in which we were served two starters, two first dishes, one pizza and one dessert. I had a glass of wine, my wife a coke. The starters were a delicious plate of fried zucchini and a milk popping burrata served with simple tomatoes and tasty olive oil; we then continued with a plate of ragù ravioli and nduja mafaldine and a mushroom truffle and sausage white pizza. The dessert was a fantastic pistachio tiramisu. We spent £80 in total. The pictures speak for themselves.
Don Luigi is founded on a way of conceiving restaurants that belongs to decades ago, where the owner vowed entirely to provide a clear and recognisable formula and stay consistent to it: before the aesthetics and before the profit, give customers the best food experience and leave an imprinting of joy and memories.
The owner has created a little gem which doesn’t know arrogance and pretentiousness, that keeps the food offer as close as possible to legit vernacular Italian cuisine, but luckily did not stop at the usual 4 overabused dishes that most fake restaurants learn (badly) and then sell for legit - cacio e pepe, carbonara, bolognese e amatriciana pasta. No. She keeps improving the food offer adding little touches and dishes here and there, with a seasonal changing menu that often forces you to come back in different periods of the year to taste different things (some examples: I once had a deer ragù pasta that was cooked slowly for more than 12 hours, another time we had an octopus served with broad beans pure, my wife loves the seafood linguine).
The cherry on the cake is a pizza formula that I can’t explain how has been able to stay so consistent in all these years: the dough must have a secret to be always crunchy and light on the edge, soft and strong in the middle, moist and not dry, but able to hold the typical “triangle slice”; served with the best natural and fresh ingredients like only a true Italian can recognise, the pizzas are always delicious and light, never heavy on the stomach, never burned, never undercooked. The pizzas will always look pretty and genuine like only a perfectioned home dish can do, and even though they don’t scream cinematic Instagram with acrobatics from the chef, you will keep thinking about it days after as one of the best pizzas in the neighborhood.
There is no best test for a pizzeria than the simplest margherita (when the ingredients are fresh, you don’t need anything else); however, Don Luigi is also brave without hazarding too much and will also propose some audacious recipes that will stick with you to the point you will ask yourself how to replicate them (the pizza pumpkin burrata and nduja is simply jaw dropping!!!).
But the most important thing is that, the owner, spreads joy for her work from every centimetre of her body. She is friendly, joyful, present. She remembers every customer, every story, every detail. She will remember about you and about the stories you will share with her, she listens and she genuinely cares about her customers, because, as mentioned earlier, I think she believes in an old school where creating a solid relationship and fidelity with you is more important than leaving you one night with the empty wallet.
I can only hope that Don Luigi will be always true to itself. The London scene simply needs places like this, because everyone deserves to remember that once upon a time, restaurants were places where you desired to go back infinite times, and to see them growing as much as growing with them. With your fiancè first, then with your wife and kids. Luckily, there is Don Luigi to remind us that this is still possible.
