Baccalà Italian seafood and wine restaurant in Bermondsey

With an Italian husband who always wants pasta on a Saturday, we’re always on the lookout for great Italian restaurants in London. We happened to discover Baccalà one day while we were out for lunch in Bermondsey Street and thought the menu looked really good. So we added it to our ‘must try’ list and tried it we did!

Baccalà is a contemporary Italian seafood and wine restaurant that also has a wine shop. Baccalà translates as ‘salted cod’ in English. There is a focus on seafood, however the menu also has options for vegetarians.

The decor inside is quite minimal and modern. They have bar counter seating upstairs, with some tables, and then more tables downstairs where there’s an open kitchen.

When we dined for lunch the weather was really good so we sat outside on the pavement. There are only four tables outside so if the weather is nice, you’ll need to request them. It’s also great for people watching!

The executive chef and co-founder has worked at many Four Seasons hotels around the world, so expect beautifully presented and well balanced dishes. Everything is also locally and sustainably sourced.

There are no paper menus at Baccalà. All of the dishes are written down on a chalkboard and dishes are crossed out as they sell out. I have to say that everything sounded delicious and it was hard to choose what to order!

The food at Baccala Bermondsey

We ordered the bread to start with whilst we were looking over the menu. The bread was freshly made and absolutely delicious, served with Extra Virgin Olive Oil from Tuscany. As well as slices of bread there was also pane carasau, which is a thin crispy flatbread from Sardinia. The bread was so good, we ordered more!

For our starters we ordered the roasted octopus with baby potatoes and olives as well as the burrata on pappa al pomodoro. The octopus was beautiful presented and very tasty, however it was quite pricey at £23 – especially as it wasn’t necessarily a starter.

The burrata on the other hand was a generous portion and better value at £16. Pappa al pomodoro recipe is a traditional Tuscan soup made of bread and tomatoes and is a wonderful accompaniment to the creamy burrata. Of course we mopped up the sauce with our bread!

For one of our mains we opted for the Chitarrine carbonara with mussels – although they had run out of Chitarrine pasta so we had Spaghettoni instead. It had a lovely lemony flavour and again, was beautifully presented and looked very elegant. The portion of mussels was pretty generous too.

We chose the farfalle with sprouted broccoli and ricotta as our second pasta. If you’ve been to Puglia, one of their traditional pasta dishes is with cime di rape (broccoli rabe), which I think this was made with as it was slightly bitter. It was really yummy! And a fairly generous portion too for £13.

The wine we chose to go with our pasta was a white wine from the Marche region of Italy, called Falerio Aurora. It had an amazing colour – almost pink – and was quite dry. I think it worked really well with the pasta dishes. They have wine from all twenty regions so expect to see some wines you’ve never heard of. Perfect for wine connoisseurs!

We didn’t order dessert because they only had tiramisu, which we’re not really big fans of. My husband ordered a coffee and he said it was ‘a proper Italian coffee.’

Overall impressions of Baccalà

We thoroughly enjoyed our lunch at Baccalà in Bermondsey Street and can’t wait to return to try some new dishes. They have a great lunch special from 12 – 5 pm, Tuesday to Saturday, where you can get three courses for £32. Great value! We also really liked the decor inside – especially the counter seating.

Pin this post