Donna Margherita

I can’t believe this was my first time at Donna Margherita in Clapham – I really do believe I must be the worst and most un-up-to-date of the London food bloggers out there. Whatever. We were there one weekday night as part of a large group from work to try their Neapolitan specialities. At our table, we chose to share a few starters before moving onto mains.

A Neapolitan selection of fried goodies (A’ fritturin) kicked off our meal – I found these even lighter than those I encountered in Naples, and hence enjoyed these greatly. There were potato croquettes, bite sized arancini, fried polenta and fried matchsticks of aubergine and courgette.

Meatballs (E` purpett) were fine…. sorry, not mindblowing but perfectly fine in a simple tomato sauce.

Finally, a parmigiana di melanzane (A’ parmigian e mulgnan) was silky and cheesy and gorgeous (have you ever encountered a bad version? I haven’t.). I could have had a large portion of this for my main course.

Blai and I split two main courses. Porchetta was an innovatively spiral cut bit of tender herbed roast pork belly layered with aubergine puree and served with spinach. I can never turn down a good bit of porchetta and this was indeed a most tender and crispy-edged good bit.

A side of friarielli was just as I remembered it in Naples. The wonderfully bitter green had been braised to melting softness in plenty of garlic, chilli and olive oil.

A pizza Romana was pretty solid but by this point in the meal, we were feeling a bit too full to enjoy it.

From what I could see of my colleagues’ dishes, it looked like their pasta dishes were also excellent!

I can’t believe I forgot to take a photo of the tiramisu we shared (as usual, we found our second wind for dessert)! As it was already quite late that night (our dishes took quite a while to come out as we were such a large group), there were only a couple of tiramisus left. Our tiramisu was excellent.

At our table, we ended up tucking into our friend’s Tortino di ricotta as well! This was a dense cheese cake that was utterly gorgeous.

It’s a fun buzzing place with excellent Neapolitan food; I can’t believe I never visited before – actually I had no idea that they served specifically Neapolitan cuisine. There are still a few things on the menu that I’d like to try and I hope to return sooner rather than later!

Donna Margherita
183 Lavender Hill
London SW11 5TE