Lina Stores – London

I like Italian food quite a lot. I like the fact it’s at its best when simple and made by people who know what they’re doing.

I rarely go out to eat it though, as so often it’s bad. Not bad like inedible, just bad because I could have bought all the ingredients myself and cooked it better at home in about 15 minutes.

Basically, paying to eat terrible carbonara irritates the piss out of me.

Would you believe it was actually the lady woman in my life who said we should try Lina Stores?

“Where should we go for dinner on Friday night?” I asked.

“What about Lina Stores?” She replied.

“I haven’t heard of it.”

“An Italian I know said it’s where she goes when she wants authentic Italian food.”

“All well and good, but I haven’t heard of it.”

After some back and forth, and some Googling, I asked if we could replay the conversation.

“Where should we go for dinner on Friday night?” I asked.

“I’m not sure, where would you like to go?” She replied.

“I’ve heard great things about Lina Stores.” I boasted.

“Ok.”

Much better.

After a brief jaunt through London’s Soho district (I took us to the Lina Stores deli which is on a different street to the restaurant because I’m an idiot) we entered and took a couple of seats at the bar.

I like sitting at the bar in restaurants as it means I can bombard the chef with difficult questions and distraction techniques to see how on top of their game they are. You know, squawking like a seagull while shouting about how long to cook parpadelle – that sort of thing.

To begin, I had a negroni. I like negronis, ordering them makes me feel sophisticated for some bewildering reason.

With this we ate Parma ham and Gorgonzola extra dolce with pear & mustard chutney.

I fucking love Gorgonzola dolce, especially when it’s really soft and runny. I love it so much that I’ve decided I want to die by drowning in it in the Trevi fountain while American tourists pelt my bloated corpse with euros.

We then ordered three plates of pasta to share:

Veal ravioli, gnocchi with peas & salted ricotta and agnolotti with black truffle.

They were all very tasty – the truffled agnolotti being the winner.

As our empty plates were removed the waitress asked which was our favourite and I told her what I just told you. However, she was aghast that we hadn’t ordered their most popular dish – the pici with porcini mushrooms and Umbrian sausage.

Suffering from a quite severe case of FOMO I said we’ll have one of those too. Despite being full. I am the poster boy for greed.

Despite feeling particularly obese, I was very glad we ordered it as it was delicious.

“Did you have dessert, you fat fuck?” I hear you cry.

Yes, I had chocolate cake and an espresso martini. I couldn’t finish the chocolate cake despite it being very good, because I actually felt like I was going to explode.

So, there you go. It was very good, and also very reasonably priced. Go if you want, I’m not the boss of you.