Pasta Evangelists has opened in Richmond, and I went to check it out the other day. 

The Restaurant Itself:

It’s very handily placed for a cinema trip and the restaurant is interesting.  It has a counter serving pasta, and also tables where one can dine while watching the footfall on the street outside through the ‘shopfront’ large windows.  As well as customers popping in for a takeaway, there are couriers coming in, collecting for home delivery companies like Deliveroo.

There’s a choice of waiter service or ordering online.  I have to say that my Italian friend Barbara (who certainly knows her pasta) and I were a bit confused as to the actual ordering process.  Our charming waiter did say there was a paper menu, but suggested we use the QR code at the table as that menu was, apparently, more up to date. 

Annoyingly, when I got home I discovered that the link no longer works, so I had to refer to the menu on the website, and found that quite a few of the delicious things we had to eat aren’t featured on it.  

Anyway, back to the restaurant itself… the walls are adorned with lovely photos of classic Italian scenes and the tables have a wooden container with the napkins and cutlery.

Our Meal

We ordered a side of charcuterie and a burrata with tomato sauce to start, alongside some focaccia.  The food was delicious, and as Barbara pointed out, very obviously top quality, authentic, Italian produce is used. 

The charcuterie was served at perfect temperature to allow the flavours to shine through and the fennel salami was seriously delicious. 

I wouldn’t have thought of serving burrata with cold tomato sauce (pasta sauce style), but it was surprisingly good.

The focaccia was excellent too, but Barbara commented that there were no sprigs of rosemary on the top, as one might expect with a classic focaccia. 

We enjoyed a lovely glass of Italo Disco Tuscan red wine – served chilled.  The wine list is short, with excellent Italian wines, but the wines aren’t cheap, starting at £28 a bottle and rising to £42. 

Two large glasses came to £28., but there are various sizes of most wines available by the glass as well.

We shared our main courses: a portion of lobster, crab and prawn ravioli and a porcini and wild mushroom lasagne. 

One can choose different sauces for most of the pastas – we chose tomato for our ravioli.  It was really good, but we felt that they could have been more generous with the sauce. 

Interestingly one can choose different portion sizes (priced accordingly) which is good for those with a larger appetite.  

The lasagne was fabulous, a good sized portion, beautifully seasoned with lots of good bechamel. 

We shared a portion of profiteroles (apparently they usually have top-notch tiramisu but sadly had run out that evening) but as Barbara pointed out, it was good, but not particularly Italian.

 

To sum up, the food at Pasta Evangelists is excellent.  Prices aren’t cheap, but the quality is superb. 

There is home delivery of course, too, and they are running all sorts of events like pasta making classes and wine tastings (check the website for details). 

And if you sign up to their newsletters, you’ll find out which pasta is on special offer for the week for home delivery and details of all sorts of other special promotions.