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Kitchen Italia

Italian Restaurant in Covent Garden
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No longer at this address

Our records show that Kitchen Italia is closed.

Address
41 Earlham Street
Covent Garden
London
WC2H 9LX
Map
Current
Cuisine
Italian
Region
Covent Garden
Nearest Station
Covent Garden
0.10 miles

Our latest restaurant is in London's trendy Seven Dials and is a lively place to stop for a good meal.

All In London Review

Lovely environment, fabulous staff and authentic pasta dishes

As you wonder along Earlham Street you pass the noisy Belgo Central and the Donmar Warehouse theatre and nearly miss the bright swirls of neon spaghetti lights inviting you to venture downstairs to Kitchen Italia. The loud, lively music is a further inducement.

Take the plunge. You emerge into what looks like a warmer, Italian version of Wagamamas – long sharing benches transversing a huge underground cavern with a bright open and busy kitchen at one end (all the chefs are Italian apparently) and an enormous bar at the other. Along the walls are neat lines of olive oil bottles – standing to attention like soldiers. Your greeting is warm and enthusiastic – which you would expect from a relatively new restaurant in this, one of the most competitive centres for affordable, relaxed eating. I adored the little metal pots of basil on the tables – and the paper placemats that explained the origin of a selection of different pasta shapes (although the low lighting made these a little difficult to read). The specials were also printed here – borlotti bean and pasta soup (£6.25), pumpkin and chestnut risotto (£7.25) and aubergine and goat’s cheese tortellini with caponata (£7.50). Vegetarian heaven.

Our waiter was Italian – from Calabria - and he shared his honest knowledge of the various options, with a great understanding of what were authentically Italian dishes and even the region of Italy from which they came. And he explained all this with an easy smile and genuine enthusiasm. Having already had some cocktails earlier in the evening, we decided to stick with the same so I can’t comment on the wine here. My colleague’s white peach bellini (£5.95) was – as advertised – zingy. My apple mojito was as you would expect.

Our waiter helped us select our starters – a thin and crispy chargrilled pizza with tomato and buffalo mozzarella (£4.95) served on a wooden chopping board and enough for two. Also some creamy parmesan and mozzarella risotto balls (arancini originating from Sicily - £3.95) which were served with some spicy tomato sauce (which could have been a little spicier).

He guided us away from one or two of our menu choices and we ended up with linguine vongole (clams are my favourite - £9.95) and the spaghetti meatballs (£9.95). Other items that were suggested included the black truffle tagliolini (originating in Piemonte - £7.95), the mafaldine with spicy sausage (originating in Calabria - £9.95) and the polenta and wild boar ragu (originating in Milan - £9.95).

As a frequent visitor and fan of Italy and Italian cooking, I even learned a little about Italian food. For example, I never knew that carbonara was invented by Italian-American GIs from their rations of egg and bacon nor that spaghetti and meatballs originated in New Jersey to satisfy the American lust for red meat.

The total for our two starters, two mains and two cocktails came to £40.70 which I thought was incredibly reasonable bearing in mind the really central location, lovely environment, fabulous staff and the authenticity of the pasta dishes. If I wanted pasta, the modern and fun Kitchen Italia would beat Pasta Brown, Zizzi and Pizza Express no problem – and would be especially a good choice if I had the kids with me. They do some great pre and post theatre meals (and apparently some of the actors from the Donmar next door also pop in to eat there – and take advantage of the loyalty card system) and all items can apparently be taken away.

Reviewed by KimT
Published on Feb 8, 2010

User Reviews

EmmaB234

Nov 28, 2011

Never written a bad review on a restaurant but I just have to stress how AWFUL this place is. Genuinely the WORST meal I have ever had! Shockingly bad service and the food was even worse!!

Went on a Saturday night, was just 2 of us and we got sat on a table of 8. After that we were ignored for about 30 minutes before we managed to get someone to take a drinks order. Took 20 minutes after that to get a food order taken!

We ordered starters (garlic focaccia with cheese, breaded mozzarella) and mains (goats cheese ravioli, lasagne) as we had a 241 tastecard. Garlic focaccia turned up 2 minutes later (no cheese) so we sent that back, they just returned the same bread, now cold, with a bit of cheese sprinkled on top! Mozzarella turned up 10 minutes later, ok but fairly un-inspiring.

To my surprise my main, goats cheese ravioli, turned up about 2 minutes after the last starter when we were still eating. The ravioli was the most awful thing I have ever tasted. It was beyond in-edible. It honestly tasted like vomit and I am not exaggerating. It had cold/almost frozen roasted veg on top. It was truly awful.

The second main meal turned up 15 minutes after mine. We thought you cant possibly do lasagne badly! How wrong we were! It was a huge dish with a tiny portion of dried up lasagne in the middle! The top was rock solid and the middle tasted bizarre. There was barely any meat in it, just sheets of pasta. We managed half because we were so hungry! It was edible but way below average for a fairly standard pasta dish! No one asked us if our meal was ok even though 1 plate was sat on the edge of the table untouched and we didnt eat all the lasagne.

They bought over the bill automatically! The waitress started saying as a gesture of good will they had taken off the goats cheese pasta. Hardly a gesture of good will given that it was in-edible and we had 241 with the tastecard so 1 of the meals would of been taken off anyway!

It was awful from start to finish
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Anonymous

Apr 3, 2010

Went to Kitchen Italia with a group of 45 to have their Theatre Express (quick dinner before theatre evening). We were expected at the Dominion at 7.20 pm, but unfortunately arrived at the restaurant at 6.30 pm, due to the fact we had some difficulties finding Earlham Street (not quite obvious if you're not from London), and some students of the group had been late at the meeting point. First thing, we were heartily welcomed even though we were late, and second, everybody was served in 20 minutes ! These guys saved us the day ! The pasta was excellent, I just regret we didn't have time to enjoy it relaxed. The staff are young, dynamic, friendly and really helpful. I wish to thank them for what they did for us on that night (Wednesday, March 24th, 2010) : we were on time for the show, and had time to eat, thanks to them !
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