What if there were no Italian restaurants in London? Difficult to imagine, isn’t it? Over the years, pasta, pizza and ice cream have become staples of Britain’s national cuisine, and it has been said that London became obsessed with Italian food long ago.
The enormous number of Italian restaurants London boasts would appear to back up that claim. And we ought not be surprised, since the Italian Consulate General has estimated that there are some 600,000 Italians in the UK, of whom about 58% live in the capital. And there are in fact over 2000 Italian restaurants in London.
Italian refugees displaced by the Napoleonic Wars began to arrive in London in the 1800s, chiefly in Clerkenwell, where from the ‘30s onwards Italian migrants set up cafés, restaurants and delicatessens. In London Italian restaurants serving classic meat and pasta-based dishes and desserts such as tiramisu became particularly popular in the 1960s, leading to the growth in popularity of pasta as an alternative to potatoes.
Now if you are looking for a dining experience which is Italian but with added multicultural zest, try a Sicilian Italian restaurant in London. With its Greek, Spanish, French and Arab influences, Sicilian cuisine lifts you away from the usual Italian food clichés into a whole new world of flavours.
A superb place to experience Sicilian food is Luce e Limoni Sicilian restaurant London. It is situated in Clerkenwell, and is quite simply the most authentic Sicilian restaurant in the city: a friendly haven where you will be treated to a mouth-watering fusion of Mediterranean flavours. Luce e Limone restaurant was opened in 2013 by Fabrizio Zafarana. Already the owner of a successful Italian restaurant in London, Fabrizio wanted to bring the joys of his native Sicily’s cuisine to his adoptive home. He has succeeded rather well.