Highbury, North London  ·  since 2009

Osteria
Quaranta

Il gusto della tradizione

Handmade pasta, wood smoke and candlelight, down a quiet Highbury street the locals would rather keep to themselves.

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La nostra storia

A small room, a long table, and far too much wine.

Osteria Quaranta began the way the good ones do. In 2009 we took the keys to a narrow room off Highbury Park, painted it the colour of an old wine cellar, and started cooking the food we grew up wanting to come home to.

Quaranta means forty. Forty covers when the room is full. Forty labels on a list of small Italian growers. Forty years of recipes carried in a notebook from Bologna to a corner of North London, and changed only when the season insists.

Nothing here is rushed. The ragù sits on the stove for a working day. The pasta is rolled each morning by hands that have done it ten thousand times. You are not a table number. You are a guest who has finally arrived.

A chef's hands shaping fresh pasta on a floured wooden board
Pasta rolled each morning, before the room wakes.

We cook the food we grew up wanting
to come home to.

Lucia and Tomaso Ferretti, founders
La Sala

A candlelit room of your own.

Behind the main dining room, beneath an arch of old London brick, La Sala seats up to twenty-two. Long lunches, big birthdays, the quiet anniversary you would rather not share with strangers.

We lay one table, open something good from the cellar, agree a menu in advance, and then leave you to the evening. Tell us the occasion and we will look after the rest.

Enquire about La Sala

Kind words, kept by the door

★★★★★
The kind of room you walk into cold and leave already planning your return. The cacio e pepe alone is worth crossing London for.
Eleanor WhitfieldHighbury
★★★★★
We came for an anniversary and were treated like regulars by the time the bread arrived. This is how a neighbourhood restaurant should feel.
Marco BelliniIslington
★★★★★
Handmade pasta that tastes like someone's grandmother is still in the kitchen. Simply the best Italian in N5, and the locals know it.
Priya AnandStoke Newington
★★★★★
A hidden gem the neighbourhood is right to be protective of. Warm, unhurried, and quietly excellent from antipasti to amaro.
The London Tableguide
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Tables hold for fifteen minutes. For parties of seven or more, or for La Sala, leave a note and we will call you back.