I had a lovely day with Luca shortly before Laghi’s closed. I took him to London to decompress, to Termini because I knew he would love it, then to The Devonshire for a Guinness, then he took me to St John’s for lunch, and then Brutto for negroni and the back to Termini because he loved it so much the first time, before the train home where one of us fell to sleep. We had intended to do a few pasta bars, Bancone, Padella, maybe another, but that never happened. I wanted to get that out – I needed to get it out – because I genuinely love the man. He’s my mate. He means more to me than any food blog ever will. We have a proper friendship that means we are supportive of each other and at times critical. We do nice things in each other’s company and we laugh and drink too much. Sat at that bar in Soho, eating freshly sliced cuts of pig straight off the blade, sipping negronis like we’d just found their existence and away from the bullshit circles of gossip that dominate Birmingham, I’ve rarely seen him laugh so much. With that you can take the following few hundred words with as much trust as you want. I don’t care. I’m going to tell you what his new restaurant does and what I think of it.
I didn’t know Angela’s was opening. I found out like everyone else, by flicking through Instagram until I saw a post with their opening hours and muttering to myself “that crazy fucker has only gone and openend it again”. I went and had pizza whilst on a business meeting with Will that involved two, maybe three bottles of wine, along with digestifs very much in the plural. Will paid the bill. The pizza was good, like old Laghis’s; firm crust, nothing sloppy about it, I think he is messing about with ancient grains to get more flavour into it. But it is the ingredients where he has always been that little bit better than the rest. Cured meats from his hometown of Bologna, same with the cheese. Vegetables picked from a market in Rome over FaceTime with his friend, flown over with whatever truffles he fancies. On the occasion he does buy British, it’s seafood from Billingsgate market, usually involving a twilight drive to London to handpick them himself. Let’s not forget that he also has a full time job as a doctor at the QE. He needs to slow down.
By the time I’m back ten days later the place has had a spruce-up. Sure it’s still the same building as the old restaurant in location, size, and frame, but there has been an effort made to return it to Luca’s familiar, a trattoria-style family-run restaurant that does pizza and does pasta. The menu is chalked-up on a blackboard, he’s added that trendy panelling I can never remember the name of, and the wine has gone back to an all-Italian fare that mostly forgoes natural styles. We have negroni, of course we do, though there are various different distillations and flavours that Luca is playing around with, a little like Termini does. The coffee one is excellent but he is still messing around with the intensity. I have no idea if this will be on when you visit.
That night we eat room temperature gossamer sheets of meats, sharp pickled vegetables, and focaccia that is light and so loaded with the good stuff it will leave an extra virgin olive oil mark on the fingertips as you eat it. There is more pizza – this time an ‘nduja one shielded with rocket – and sticks of baked dough with an arrabiata sauce that could do with borrowing the slogan from Yorkie Bars. There is the ragu, probably the best, absolutely the most authentic, that has the top note of orange which works brilliantly with the beef. With this ragu is the pasta, either made in the fancy pants machine in the basement, or rolled by hand by his mother, Angela.
I’ve met his mother on dozens of occasions. I always hug her and engage in my broken Italian, whilst she assumes that my surname means I should know more than I do in return. She is a tiny woman with strong opinions. These are dishes that she knows religiously, that she taught to her children, and you can guarantee that she’ll let it be known if something isn’t right. In many ways there could be no more perfect name for Luca’s comeback than to be an homage to his Mother; a seismic shift from the modern to his Italian roots. I’m not going to attribute a score to this because there are emotions involved, but I’m glad he is back and I’m glad he’s took the decision to do the restaurant that he was ultimately born to do. As with the old restaurant you can expect to see me a lot at the bar, chugging on a negroni, my face deep in a bowl of pasta.