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Red Pepper
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Even on week nights, this neighbourhood Italian does a roaring trade. Tables, cheerfully crammed into the small, red-painted dining room, fill quickly, and a steady stream of locals flows in for takeaway pizzas. Service, as a result, is of the no-nonsense school (our quite polite request to move tables was dismissed with a cursory shake of the head from the higher powers), and the dishes arrive with unfailing alacrity. Unless you manage to nab a table by the window, Red Pepper is no place for lingering tête-à-tête. The focus is on the food: simple but enticing own-made pastas (pappardelle with organic chicken livers and sage, say, or fresh artichoke and king prawn ravioli), a daily-changing list of specials, and enormous thin-crust pizzas. Everything we sampled was exemplary: from a piping-hot pizza parmigiana, laden with mozzarella and aubergine, to a plate of perfectly grilled squid, sea bream and luscious king prawns. Regulars rhapsodise about the tiramisu, but the delicious dark chocolate tart (intense in flavour but light in texture) gets our vote every time.
Time Out Eating & Drinking Guide 2009
Time Out reviews restaurants anonymously and pays for meals. Of course, we cannot guarantee the accuracy or independence of user reviews.
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Details
- 8 Formosa Street, Maida Vale, W9 1EE
- Area: Maida Vale
- Tel: 020 7266 2708
- Category: Pizza & Pasta
- Travel: Warwick Avenue tube
- Times: Dinner served 6.30-11pm Mon-Sat; 6.30-10pm Sun. Lunch served noon-3.30pm Sat, Sun
- Price: Main courses £8-£17
- Credit cards: MC, V
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I do think the food is good here but at what point does the extreme discomfort of the place negate its reasonably good food - it is so cramped - people are running by you the whole time threatening to drop pizza boxes on your head - you are sitting on top of each other but yet cannot hear each other - and constantly being shoved by someone walking behind you.
And the service is both frantic and extremely slow -frankly it felt like torture and when we walked out we sighed with relief - but if a good pizza is enough compensation - enjoy the assault.
Ate here with a bunch of university friends: smiling service, great atmosphere, lovely food, and crucially, not overpriced.
Reminded me of Italy, always a bonus
Certainly a spot everybody would be happy to have around the corner. The pizza is very good (if you like ultra thin crust); the suckling pig is just great and they do some marvelous fish. I gave them six stars because this is the perfect neighbourhood place. However, they sell you the tiramisu as being the best in London. Well, it's good, but I do hope for the sake of London as a food place, that somebody can do a better one (maybe soaking the sponge fingers in a bit of coffee and Amaretto before pouring in the mascarpone cream or maybe adding a zest of orange)
Great pizzas, swiftly and expertly prepared. Sit downstairs and the hubbab is warm, rather than overpowering or deafening. Wife reckons it was the best pizza she's had in London.