{"id":522566,"date":"2025-10-23T16:12:16","date_gmt":"2025-10-23T16:12:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/522566\/"},"modified":"2025-10-23T16:12:16","modified_gmt":"2025-10-23T16:12:16","slug":"londons-10-best-old-school-italian-restaurants","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/522566\/","title":{"rendered":"London&#8217;s 10 best old school Italian restaurants"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>There is a cafe and deli on the island of Ischia, off the coast of Napoli, which I think might be the inspiration behind Ill Giardino, one of Peckham\u2019s most joyful restaurants. Like Serpico Specialit, that Italian cafe, Ill Giardino is beautiful: outside, it\u2019s a soft mustard yellow, with green shutters and a green and white awning that hangs stiffly over a few alfresco tables. Inside, it\u2019s a riot of old wood, the soft, curved kind that smells a bit like the back room of a church, paper napkins and dim lighting. There\u2019s exposed brick, stumpy thick wine glasses waiting for inoffensive house wine, and a dainty little bar that should, really, only ever be manned by a small old man called Mario who is waiting to steal your wife. Nothing has changed since 1987, I\u2019m sure. Right, the food: don\u2019t deviate from one of the pasta dishes, most of which are softened by a fair amount of cream. There\u2019s spaghetti with garlic, chilli and mussels; penne with smoked bacon and a snappy tomato sauce; or, my favourite \u2014 a perfect representation of Italian-British cooking in London \u2014 the tagliatelle with chicken, ham, peas, and a little chilli. One more thing: Ill Giardino remains wonderfully cheap. Everything is well under \u00a320, even the trout and roast lamb. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There is a cafe and deli on the island of Ischia, off the coast of Napoli, which I&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":11401,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7757],"tags":[748,393,1203,4884,42398,14718,2199,257,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-522566","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-london","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-england","10":"tag-food","11":"tag-great-britain","12":"tag-indian","13":"tag-italian","14":"tag-italy","15":"tag-london","16":"tag-uk","17":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115424365731036937","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/522566","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=522566"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/522566\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11401"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=522566"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=522566"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=522566"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}