The best way to spend a rainy Saturday in London?
Grab a lovely friend, jump on a bus down the King’s Road, and stop outside Made In Italy.
Then order alllll the delicious food, enjoy the company of said lovely friend (and the delicious food), and then head off for a wander through the wet streets of Chelsea to snap some colourful photos and laugh until you cry.
Seriously. Just take my word for it. Best. Rainy. Saturday. Ever.
(Read on for more about that delicious food we ate!) (And also for photos of me laughing like a hyena.)
STARTERS
We ordered a bottle of Italian white wine, and started our feast with a couple of starters to share:
Fresh burrata with pesto and toasted bread. If you’ve never had burrata before, it’s like mozzarella, but hollow, and the inside is pure cream. It’s gooey and moreish and perfect spread on (slightly burnt) toast with salty pesto.
(They do a “Burrata Atomica” too, which we didn’t order but sounded INCREDIBLE so it’s worth a mention: burrata wrapped in pizza dough, fried, sprinkled with pesto and parmesan, then served on a bed of tomato sauce. Insane, right?)
We also ordered a starter portion of the ricotta cheese ravioli to share. It arrived drizzled with an absolutely perfect sage butter sauce, and it was so good that we’d devoured the whole thing in minutes.
PIZZA
Made In Italy’s new menu offers a choice of three pizza bases. There’s a classic Napolitan base, a healthy multigrain option, and a gluten-free base (though they do specify that it’s prepared and cooked in the same kitchen and oven as the others).
They also do a vegan coconut-based cheese topping, and you can pay £1 extra to have burrata instead of mozzarella, which I was SUPER tempted by, but didn’t get in the end.
For our mains, Erica went for the specials menu and ordered the Aubergine Parmigiana pizza.
Have you ever had a parmigiana before? It’s a delicious Italian dish made by layering aubergine, tomato sauce and cheese. A bit like a lasagne, but not.
The pizza version is made with a simple tomato sauce, slices of fried aubergine sprinkled with parmesan, and plenty of mozzarella. (They have their own cheese-maker in Battersea, who makes all the mozzarella and burrata!)
I ordered the Ortolana pizza, a delicious vegetarian feast of grilled courgette, sundried tomatoes, drizzled pesto, and fresh mozzarella.
Both came with chewy classic crusts, that I honestly thought matched up to my all-time favourite pizza place: Franco Manca’s.
Overall: a solid 10/10 for the pizzas!
Red peplum top: ASOS // JUST GO necklace: Zeal and Heart
DESSERT
I don’t usually do dessert, but as soon as I spotted home-made ricotta and pistachio cannolis on the menu, I couldn’t say no.
They’re made locally, specially for the Made In Italy King’s Road branch, and honestly, I wish they sold them in boxes so I could take them home with me.
The crunchy pastry took a bit of battering to cut through, but it was 100% worth the effort to reach the creamy sweet filling. The perfect ending to a gorgeous meal!
Long story short: definitely DEFINITELY look up your local branch of Made In Italy.
We had a quick look online, and the King’s Road branch had the lowest reviews of all of them, but everything was fabulous there, so just imagine how good the other restaurants are?!
We’ve already got plans to visit the Clapham Junction branch next month, and I’m already at the analyse-the-menu stage, trying to decide if I want to order the same thing all over again or risk finding something even MORE yummy.
So excuse me, I’m off to figure out the pros and cons of skinny jeans vs Burrata Atomica…
PS. You can read Erica’s review of Made In Italy here!)
*We were guests of Made in Italy for this visit.
