One of London's best pasta restaurants is getting a new spot on Carnaby Street

A full decade since London collectively lost its mind over the idea that pasta didn’t have to be expensive, overwrought or drowned in truffle oil to feel special, Padella is announcing another restaurant. Back in 2016, the Borough Market original arrived like a slap, introducing £7 bowls of fresh pici, counter-side twirls of cacio e pepe, and queues wrapped enthusiastically around the block.

Since then, Padella has become one of those rare London restaurants that feels part of the city’s bloodstream, a rite of passage, a date-night Plan B, and the place you’d recommend to out-of-towners with confidence they’ll come away well fed. It began in Borough Market, then Shoreditch got its own branch in 2020, and now, finally, the centre of gravity shifts to the West End with a Padella opening in Soho.

It’s landing on Kingly Street, right in the Carnaby ecosystem, the type of neighbourhood where restaurants either thrive forever or disappear into the ether within six months. Padella will hopefully avoid the latter.

The new site will be across two stories. Upstairs sticks to the formula: quick-turnover tables, clatter, clink, carb euphoria. The kind of room where your waiter has the reflexes of an F1 pit crew member and your pasta arrives before you’ve finished looking at the drinks menu. It’s fast, loud, and deliberately chaotic, the exact energy that made the original so good.

Downstairs is where Padella is quietly levelling up. The basement restaurant and private dining room have been styled as a 1960s Soho lounge, with mood lighting, a bit of swagger, and a pinch of cinematic atmosphere. Less “squeeze in, eat, roll out” and more “stay for another glass, we’re not going anywhere”. It feels like Padella is experimenting with grown-up energy while still keeping its elbows firmly on the table.

As for the food, don’t panic: the Pici Cacio e Pepe isn’t going anywhere. Nor is the Beef Shin Ragu, nor any of the dishes that have been replicated, re-imagined and hopelessly imitated across London for the last decade. But the team are promising new recipes made especially for the Soho site, subtle evolutions rather than reinventions, rooted in the same bare-bones, no-nonsense Italian cooking that Siadatan has quietly mastered.

Ten years on, Padella returns not with reinvention but refinement, a reminder that the most exciting a restaurant can do is stay the same. The new site is set to open on 2 Kingly Street, London W1B 5PB in February 2026.

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