Tim Siadatan's Case for the Pasta Dinner
Fresh pasta rolled in the window, no reservations at Borough Market, and a pici cacio e pepe that has held its line since 2016. The queue moves faster than it looks, if you know when to join it.
The pici cacio e pepe arrives coiled tight in a shallow bowl, glossed in emulsified pecorino and enough black pepper to catch in the back of your throat. It is the dish that put Padella on the map in 2016 and it is the dish that still justifies the queue in 2025. Nothing on the menu has drifted upmarket. Nothing has been dressed up. The pasta is still hand-rolled in the window facing Southwark Street, and the room downstairs is still the same wood-panelled basement it has always been.
Tim Siadatan and Jordan Frieda, who also run Trullo in Islington, opened this as the pasta bar to Trullo's proper restaurant. The premise was simple and remains so: short menu, fresh pasta, low prices, no reservations. The Borough original is the one people queue for. Shoreditch and Soho, the newer siblings, take bookings.
Padella refuses to grow up, and the pici cacio e pepe is still the best cheap pasta plate in central London.
Editorial Deep
The menu is a single laminated card and it stays small on purpose. Six or seven pastas, a handful of starters, no mains in the usual sense, no desserts to speak of beyond an affogato and a scoop of gelato. The kitchen makes fresh pasta and dresses it. That is the entire proposition, and the discipline of it is why the plates land the way they do.
The room reads younger and more mixed than you would guess for a Borough Market address. Couples on early dates who chose 5pm to avoid the wait. A pair of women in their fifties splitting a bottle of white on the ground floor. Tourists from Copenhagen with the guidebook still on the table. Solo diners at the counter reading on their phones between courses. Nobody is dressed up, and nobody looks like they came from Mayfair.
The first sixty seconds are the whole game at the Borough Market original. There is no host stand in the usual sense and there is no reservation to check. Scan the QR code by the door or open the Dojo app while you are still on Southwark Street, join the virtual queue, and walk away. A text arrives when the table is ready. Reports put the typical midweek wait around forty minutes. To skip it entirely, arrive at opening — 11:30am for lunch, 5pm for dinner — and you walk straight in. That is the move. Anyone standing in a physical line at 7pm on a Friday has not read the instructions.
The trap is ordering wine like you are at a proper restaurant. Padella's list is short and honest and priced fairly, but the whole economic argument for eating here collapses if two people share a full bottle to accompany two plates of pasta priced like the £13.50 pici or the £16.50 pappardelle. Order by the glass, order the house carafe, or stick to a beer. The bill should feel disproportionate to what arrived at the table — in your favour, not theirs.
The winter rotation is when a return earns itself. Cold weather brings out the heavier sauces — the beef shin ragu reads differently in November than it does in July, and the kitchen leans into braises and butter when the market outside is dark by 4pm. That is the visit to plan. A Tuesday in February, 5pm, downstairs, two people, three plates, a glass of Nebbiolo each.
What to eat
Don't miss.
Pici cacio e pepe; pappardelle with eight-hour beef shin ragu; burrata to start
“You will queue, and you will still leave. The pici is why.”
Go for the pici cacio e pepe, the pappardelle ragu, and the burrata; skip the wine list and use the Dojo app. If a proper sit-down dinner is the assignment, Manteca does it better at double the price.
The Verdict
