House of Carbs: The London restaurants championing pimped-out pasta and indulgent dining

I’ve been playing around with my balls for months now,” says Tim Siadatan, chef and co-owner at Borough Market pasta outpost Padella, where 500 diners turn up daily to try his pici cacio e pepe — pasta bathed in butter, cheese and cracked black pepper.

Earlier this year Siadatan hit on a trick to reward devoted fans queuing around the corner for Padella’s midday opening: warming, deep-fried pasta bombs, modelled on the arancini balls he’d been snacking on during a holiday to Rome. Sixty of the little breadcrumbed globes, some stuffed with cacio e pepe, the others with tagliarini nduja and buratta, are handed out every morning in a taste test for loyalists who are grateful to be guinea pigs.

They’ve been a smash hit. Who wouldn’t stuff their cheeks with these gooey mouthfuls? The anti-carb brigade, chiefly. Carbs developed an unhealthy reputation in the late Nineties and early Noughties, when the proliferation of no- and low-carb meal plans such as the Atkins, Dukan and South Beach diets entrenched the idea that carbs are bad.

In January the Big Carb Survey — YouGov research commissioned by Slimming World — found more than a third of people in the UK who have tried to lose weight adopted low-carbohydrate diets, which remain popular, in part, thanks to celebrities such as Gwyneth Paltrow and Kim Kardashian. “Carbfusion” is endemic — cutting the likes of pasta, potatoes and bread is still seen as an easy shortcut to weight loss.

Doctors have long poured scorn on this. “There is strong evidence that fibre, found in wholegrain versions of starchy carbs for example, is good for our health,” says dietitian Sian Porter, who provides advice for NHS England’s website. “While we should reduce the amount of free sugar in our diet, we should base our meals on starchy carbs, particularly the higher fibre varieties. Carbohydrates are one of three macronutrients — those which form a large part of our diet — the others being fat and protein. They are essential.”

Now carbs are bouncing back. “Classy carbs” are finding new appeal at London restaurants — partly spurred on by Instagram, where dishes are gleefully posted with hashtags like #choosepasta or #girlswithgluten.

Siadatan talks proudly of being part of this new pasta wave in London. Scarpetta in Monument proves pasta can be old-world but on-trend, using an authentic, naturally vegan Puglian recipe and Emilia’s Crafted Pasta in St Katherine Docks plates up a four-hour slow-cooked béchamel Bolognese sauce on freshly made pappardelle pasta, while the Northumberland Avenue outpost of Neapolitan pizzeria 50 Kalò does frittatina di pasta, where bucatini pasta is coated with bechamel and white ragu sauces before being deep fried. Across in E8, Bright has taken lasagna and done a similar thing and in Soho, Stevie Parle’s Pastaio specialises in gloopy carbonaras with pasta made by hand. An April Fool’s spoof for a “pasta burger” drew a frenzy of orders; they were sorry to disappoint.

It's not just pasta, either: burgers at newly opened Shoreditch spot Harlem Soul are “carb-loaded” with lashings of macaroni and cheese.

It’s not just for fun. The purpose of carbohydrates, Siadatan says, is “to help get you through a working day”. They “get a bad rep because people always say they slow you down and makes you sluggish and get you fat. Quite frankly, that’s your own fault. The key with carbohydrates is not to sit around doing nothing afterwards.

New restaurants opening in London this May

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The momentum is with him. Last year, a peer review by US scientists concluded that calibre of fat and carbohydrate is much more important than the percentages of them in the diet. The review doesn’t preclude fasting and dieting, but they’re largely scientific unknowns. January’s Big Carb Survey made it clear that people are bewildered about the role of carbohydrates in weight control.

“As a nation we’re bombarded with anti-carb messages,” says Dr Jacquie Lavin, head of nutrition and research at Slimming World. “Yet the truth is, carbohydrates play an important role — the current carb confusion is fuelling the UK’s obesity problem.”

In other words, it’s about quality, not quantity — so make room for more.

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