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Please note, Belpassi Bros is now closed. Time Out Food editors, October 2017.
Meatball-making Belpassi Bros Livio and Lorenzo first made a name for themselves with their Spitalfields food truck. Now they’ve got this permanent spot opposite Tooting Broadway tube. The atmosphere may scream ‘homogenous suburban cool’ – bare bricks, salvaged wooden table tops, trying funk soundtrack – but their food is rungs above your average plonk ’n’ pizza neighbourhood Italian.
To start, a selection of cicchetti were mostly faultless: crisp arancini balls were dripping with formaggio, burrata was cool and deeply creamy (a steal at £5.50) and chicken liver crostini was thick with offal (though a sticky topping of caramelised onion was waaaay too sweet).
The meatballs themselves were banging, a dense pork and fennel number particularly satisfying. The accompanying bed of polenta, so often a pedestrian pillow of meh, was fine; better still was a pile of crisp, greaseless zucchini fritti, washed down with an Aperol-heavy spritz. The only misstep? A rigatoni mac and cheese, over heavy on olive oil and oddly tasteless.
All this came pretty cheap, too – the meatball main was less than a tenner for a generous portion – and the service was utterly charming (a fact only emphasised in the utter horror displayed by our waitress over a dropped crostini). This is an ace little spot: show these bros some love.