Bancone is a sleek Italian restaurant in Covent Garden with a short, simple menu that’s split into three sections: antipasti, pasta and dessert. Chefs in the front window roll out pasta dough almost all day: putting on a show for people passing by, frantically cutting and shaping for those patiently waiting for their pasta inside. There are generally around eight plates of pasta on the menu, and half of them are usually suitable for veggies. Proper al dente pasta is slightly undercooked, and hard to get right, but the chefs here nail it. Their best dish is the poetically named ‘silk handkerchiefs’ (it’s technically called fazzoletti) with walnut butter and confit egg yolk. Simple, but delicious: soft sheets swimming in a rich sauce, with little chunks of walnut for texture. The restaurant itself is a little office-like (it looks like it used to be one), but no matter, you don’t come here for the looks. You come to Bancone to devour cheap, delicious pasta at the bar, and to people-watch those around you doing the same thing.
Time Out tip
Check out the other branches of Bancone across the city, in Soho’s Golden Square, Borough Yards and Kensington.
Order this
Alongside those glossy, infamous handkerchiefs, check out Bancone’s signature negroni menu. We like the one with orange blossom.