Just a quick note to say a very good Italian café sits on busy Shepherds Bush Road. After returning to my school’s Christmas concert in Hammersmith’s Brook Green, my companions and I were looking for somewhere local to grab food. When we learnt that nearby Zia Lucia was closed on a Monday (please sort that out Zia), my companion came up trumps with the suggestion of Farina & More. I’d never heard of this place and having now enjoyed their quality pizza, how had I not?! Clearly an oversight.
Farina & More is a truly authentic Italiante day-to-night kind’a place. By day, it sits as a cosy café, offering pizza by the square, very good-looking pastries and tortes sitting on their long coffee counter, and of course Italiante espressos. By night, Farina & More eases gently into a candlelit restaurant with a very Italianate clientele – the truer marker of any good Italian. Sitting at the table behind us was a large party of Italians, ordering starter salads and breads, very good-looking bowls of pasta including the Roman cacio e pepe, and of courses gelato. The wine glasses are also very generously filled here: be warned.
But we’d really come for the pizzas. Their USP seems to be the dough. As the name foretells, they use “Farina” flour, an unrefined, organic flour mixed with high-fibre, low-fat, multigrain flours. Mother yeast is combined with normal yeast and the dough is left to ripen over 72 hours. Whatever that means, all that time invested has certainly resulted in a tasty pizza.
Whilst the pizza specials of the day, featuring tallegio, sounded tempting, from all the choices on offer, the signature Farina & More sung out: fried aubergine, tomato, fior de mozzarella and burrata. The pizza was perfection: the generously torn burrata had been delicately placed all over the pizza post its oven scorching. Whilst a little crusty (particularly my companion’s whose very charred pizza had blown parts of the edge into some kind of volcanic eruption), the quality of the ingredients made up for this. Farina & More seem to pay great care to their produce, much of which is sourced from Italy.
The friendly staff also seem to be emblematic of the passion of this place and the pride they place on Italian cuisine. An authentic taste of Italy can be found on Brook Green. I’m sure to return.
Farina & More, 140 Shepherds Bush Rd, Hammersmith, London W6 7PB
Website:
Rating: *****
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