La Famiglia

7 Langton Street, The World's End, Chelsea, London

Since 1975 this Chelsea neighbourhood restaurant has been turning out sublime Tuscan dishes…

H ow many top-end Italian restaurants these days are brave enough to give you bread sticks wrapped in plastic? La Famiglia is utterly charming because it doesn’t follow the trends the way London’s other leading restaurants do. It’s a style of business that obviously works – after all, it’s no accident that the restaurant has been going strong for nearly four decades. This is a place that people come back to time and again. Even on a gloomy Sunday, it was packed; there’s the table meeting grandma for their weekly dinner; the one celebrating a birthday, like they do here every year (‘we need to get the mozzarella in carrozza’ they chatter); the couple on their first date, the couple on their 100th. La Famiglia is one of those rare things: a genuine cross-generational, neighbourhood institution where families return religiously not just because it’s a place imbued with memories, but because the food is fantastic.

Tuscan-born Alvaro Maccioni first opened Alvaro’s on the King’s Road in 1966, followed in 1975 by La Famiglia on neighbouring Langton street – and it seems to have changed little since. Alvaro still runs the place with his daughter Marietta, and the décor is straight out of an Italian 1970s holiday, with blue and white tiles and white-washed walls, which are cluttered with black and white family snaps. It’s not fancy, but come twilight and the diners pack in, a certain magic emerges. Service – provided by long-standing, Italian waiters – is brisk but friendly. Portions are generous. Fagioi all’olio, cannellini beans cooked in olive oil, is what Tuscan cooking is all about – simple ingredients, transformed into a hugely flavourful dish. Gramigna all montanina, a thick, hollow eggy spaghetti with a pancetta, onion chilli and pecorino, is moreish. As for the mains, a delicately grilled swordfish, topped with onions and courgettes browned and sweetened in balsamic vinegar, and a blackened chicken served with a mustard sauce. When the tiered dessert trolly (didn’t I say it was old school?) ceremoniously rumbles out, there can only be one choice: the signature Torta della Nonna. With its silky, nutty custardy filling, and lemony crust, I’m definitely seeing why everyone else in the room is a regular. I vow to become one too; with food this good, and prices this reasonable (well, for Chelsea), I can’t help but feel a tinge of jealousy this isn’t my local.