I’m begging you: if you live in N19 then please, please, please go and have dinner at Spaghi. You’d be doing yourself a favour but, more importantly, you be doing me one too. I’m worried that if business at my local Italian doesn’t pick up soon then it’ll go bust and thus deprive me of their lovely gnocchi.
Spaghi is exactly the sort of restaurant that every neighbourhood should have. The food is good, the service friendly and the prices so low that you don’t need an occasion to go there.
I’ve been three times now in the space of a month and will be visiting again tonight. Each time I’ve been impressed with the quality of what’s on offer as well as its absurd good value. Pizzas and pasta dishes start around the £6 mark and other mains are only a little dearer. House wine is under a tenner. On Tuesday and Wednesdays they do a two-for-one deal which makes it ludicrously cheap - really only a couple of quid more expensive that dining chez JD Wetherspoon and, I surely need to point out, unimaginably nicer.
My research so far reveals starters to be adequately tasty, but nothing to write home about and so large that ordering one can push you dangerously close to full before the main event.
Since discovering the gorgonzola and radicchio gnocchi on my first visit I’m afraid I haven’t really experimented with much else on the menu. Well, I had a pizza once, but only on the understanding that James would have the gnocchi and we could swap halfway through. I was determined to try something different tonight but can feel my resolve on that matter wavering. The waitress made a noise of sexual satisfaction when I ordered them the first time and I can see why. These potato dumplings are often tediously heavy and can sit in the stomach in a very leaden fashion. Spaghi’s pillowy little gnocchi, however, are comfortingly solid yet beautifully light. They sit in a creamy sauce in which the cheese’s blue note makes its presence felt but isn’t overpowering, and the richness of which is balanced by the bitter leaves. The pizzas are pretty good too, authentically crispy-based and generous with the toppings.
However, the pleasure of our budget dinners is adulterated by the fact that James and I are always nearly alone in the restaurant. Not because we want to speak to anyone else. Jeez no. It’s just that, given the incredibly generous nature of its portions and the pittance it charges for them, I worry that Spaghi is heading for bankruptcy. And then what will I do without a regular gnocchi fix?
Which is why, again, I’m begging you. Please go to Spaghi. If not for your sake, then for mine.
Spaghi Pizzeria Ristorante
6 Archway Close, London, N19 3TD
020 7687 2066
