Anima e Cuore — Restaurant in London

I probably wouldn't have gone to this restaurant without reading an exceptional review in Time out magazine. From the outside it looks like any other cafe in London, nothing wrong with it but nothing special.

Boy did this place teach me not to judge a restaurant at first glance. I can honestly say that the food that I ate here was some of the best food I have ever had in my entire life.

By day it is ran as a cafe, by night a restaurant opens up in the back room. The decor is unimpressive but ignore your surroundings, it is all about the food here.

The menu is read to you by one of the Chefs, he speaks quite quickly but don't be afraid to ask him to repeat and explain. He is so passionate about his food and will carefully explain everything to you.

There about 4 starters and 4 mains to choose from, it was so hard to choose so we all picked a dish each so we could try everything and we couldn't find fault with any of it, pure perfection.

Crab with squid ink linguine, slow cooked rib of beef, sea bass with prawns and a celeriac velouté, I could go on. Each dish was so well balanced and made with love, you can see and taste the love.

Make sure you save you room to try the homemade ice-cream, it's too good to be true.

Anima E Cuore is a BYOB (we love a BYOB), and the food is very well priced so it is very good value. Four of us had 3 courses each and the bill come £100. You cannot beat this in London for the quality of food.

This is my new favourite place to eat and we will be...

Visited again after a long break. Exceptionally good food. A deli and ice cream at the street front, with casual cafe area, but the full menu restaurant at the rear. Excellent food, pasta made in the kitchen, all home made and fresh. Lunch times can be quiet, suggest reserving for dinner as it does get busy especially Fri and Sat. They now have a liquor licence, but you can still BYO for a small corkage fee. Good news they now take a credit card. Now also open or Sunday lunch (full dinner menu). We'll worth a visit, nice people, good service. ...previously Mar23....Visited again today, found some delicious new additions to the menu. Worth trying the fois gras with pickled blackberries, and the fregola (a Sicilian specialty) with mussels and crab. All pasta and bread is made on site, delicious! Previously...Oct 2021: A very enjoyable evening, nice people and excellent food. The menu changes slightly week to week, and over several months we've tasted, or watched with envy most dishes. For starters the traditional italian dishes are all excellent but venture to the scallops gratin, or cod and zucchini. Pasta is made in the restaurant, the ravioli with cherry tomatoes is delicious, but honestly all the offerings are excellent. Last night I had the swordfish which was new, and delicious. Good selection of Italian desserts. Its BYO, so you can bring something extra nice to compliment the high quality of food. We will be...

I was super excited to try Anima e cuore, my friend had told me it was really great, so we booked a table for dinner. The experience was rather bad unfortunately. The pasta was very mediocre, it wasn’t bad but it certainly wasn’t good and it was £17 for my truffle dish (which is okay for a nice pasta, but this really wasn’t nice) I had just recently been to both Eataly and Padella in Shoreditch, both excellent in Italian food and much more affordable. When we wanted to order dessert, the dessert we chose wasn’t available anymore— that can happen, but the waiter didn’t bother to explain. In fact, he didn’t care about anything at all. There were long waiting times during our dining experience and at some point he just handed out the bill without saying anything. It came to £85 for 3 pasta bowls and 3 desserts, one of which was just a scoop of ice cream. We then waited for a while until we were told we can only pay in cash and we had to walk to a cash machine (doesn’t feel great during Covid times) when we came back we decided to tell the staff about the poor experience we had, but none of them seemed to care for their restaurant or their service. When we tried to pay separately (there was three of us) he got annoyed with us wanting our change separately. All in all this was a very disappointing experience, very poor service and average pasta. London is full of amazing restaurants with great service, skip...