Search here...
TOP
Restaurants

Mele e Pere – a Soho Trattoria

Upstairs at Mele e Pere

I first went to Mele e Pere (Apples and Pears) a few years ago with my friend Mandy, just before she moved to Australia. I remember it being really good although, oddly, in all these years I’d not returned. Until now. And it was just by chance. My husband and I turned up at Bocca di Lupo after 2pm without a reservation in the hope that they had a table. They didn’t. So off we trotted towards Picadilly and that’s where I spotted Mele e Pere. One look at the menu and my husband said, “let’s eat!”.

The outside of Mele e Pere

Mele e Pere opened in 2012 and is run by two Italian chefs, Peter and Andrea, who used to work together at Michelin starred Wild Honey (which is really good by the way). They wanted to create an authentic trattoria where people can pop in for just a drink and a sharing plate or a three course meal if they prefer. The restaurant has a small upper floor where you can eat if you choose but the bar and main restaurant can be found in the basement.

Upstairs at Mele e Pere

Upstairs at Mele e Pere where you can people watch.

I have a thing for tiles and I just love these beautifully tiled stairs leading down to the restaurant.

Mele e Pere tiled stairs

The beautiful tiled stairs leading down to the bar and restaurant.

When you enter downstairs, you are greeted with a lovely, large bar area with tables for more informal dining. I love the design – great lighting, colourful and lots of interesting vintage posters of Italian drink brands. It’s quite quirky.

The bar area at Mele e Pere

We started with an Aperol Spittz and some bread, which was really fresh and yummy. We then had burrata and salami with gnocchi fritti (which is like crescentino). Both dishes were lovely and the gnocchi fritti were delightful.

Starters at Mele e Pere

For mains I chose the tagliatelle with beef ragù and my husband had bigoli, which is a Venetian pasta dish. My husband is from Bologna, the birth place of tagliatelle with ragù so he’s always sceptical of having it outside Bologna and hence, never orders it. He tried mine and declared it to be pretty good. I thought it was really good! You could tell the ragù had taken hours to cook, as it should. We had a glass of prosecco each to accompany our pastas.

Tagliatelle with beef ragù

The portion size was really generous given that sometimes pasta portion sizes can be on the small size. It was actually too much for me but my husband happily polished it off!

All in all we had a wonderful lunch at Mele e Pere and we will definitely be returning.

Kirsty Marrins

Reader, writer, occasional runner, travel lover.

«

»

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.