Al fresco Italian at Vivo, Islington

It can be summer all year round when you dine al fresco Italian on Vivo’s roof terrace, as Hannah Bellis finds out At the table across from me are a group of four girls drinking cocktails and passing poker chips back and forth as they bask in the sunshine on Vivo’s roof terrace. It is […]

Mario’s summer pasta

Penne with Mediterranean vegetables and grilled chicken. Penne con verdure e pollo ai ferri. Ingredients 300g penne pasta 1 sweet red pepper, diced 1 small aubergine, diced 1 courgette, diced olive oil 2 chicken breasts salt and black pepper freshly chopped parsley Method Bring a large pot of salted water to the boil and add […]

Easter Omelette

Make this Spezzato di Pasqua by Amy Lucinda Jones for a hearty and nourishing meal – the perfect antidote to all those Easter eggs!   Ingredients: 1 stock cube olive oil 1 garlic clove, chopped into two pieces  (to be removed later) about 300g of lamb (no bones) chopped into fairly small pieces and with all […]

Zia Teresa London Italian restaurant

Over forty years after he last went there, Sebastian Cresswell-Turner revisits Zia Teresa, the venerable Italian restaurant in the heart of London’s Knightsbridge …     Long ago, when my family lived in Gloucestershire, London was a distant and exotic place which we visited once a year. For weeks before, my brothers and I would […]

Buy the best olive oils with Italia!’s test

  The New Year is when the new season’s olive oils appear and buyers and consumers scramble to find the best olive oils. We put seven favourites to the test   Crudo extra virgin olive oil From Something Italian www.something-italian.com Price £12.50/500ml This has won medals – even before it won the coveted Italia! Editor’s […]

L’Anima Italian restaurant review: Francesco Mazzei

Hannah Bellis meets chef Francesco Mazzei to review his Italian restaurant L’Anima in London. Try a few of his recipes or visit yourself for a spectacular taste of Italy… Now that I have eaten his food, I see Francesco Mazzei, chef patron of L’Anima restaurant, everywhere. In his work as ambassador for Welsh lamb, Calabrian […]

Olive Oil: A Tasting Hosted by Filippo Berio

Sebastian Cresswell-Turner discovers there’s more to Filippo Berio’s olive oil… At L’Anima, the ultra-chic Italian restaurant in London’s Shoreditch, a breakfast featuring Parma ham and scrambled eggs with truffle shavings formed the prelude to an olive oil tasting session hosted by Filippo Berio, whose waisted bottles with their elegant Art Nouveau labels are a familiar […]

Italian Passata Review

This simple ingredient has always been important for the Italian cook, so we embarked on a mission to discover the best Italian passata possible with these seven candidates. At the end of summer, when tomatoes are at their ripest and most tempting, growers all over Italy will be harvesting and cooking them into passata to […]

Olive Review: Italia!’s Top Picks

We review an assortment of Italian olives to find the best variety and flavour Much of the landscape in Italy has been shaped by olive groves, making it one of the defining characteristics of the country. Indeed, the Mediterranean as a whole has had a long love affair with these humble fruits. The four main […]

Margherita Pizza Review

If there’s one element of Italian cooking that Brits have really taken to their hearts, it’s pizza. We put seven shop-bought versions of the classic margherita pizza to the test. It was humble baker Raffaele Esposito, or rather Queen Margherita of Savoy, who gave this dish its distinctive name. On paying a visit to Naples […]