Britain’s love affair with Italian food is decades long and is so deeply entrenched, it’s fair to say that we’re pretty obsessed with it. So it’s not a surprise to see the two brought together in the form of Cafe Britaly on Peckham Rye Lane.
It’s the creation of Richard Crampton-Platt (front of house) and chef Alex Purdie, who met while working at Italian restaurant Bocca Di Lupo in London's Soho. As the name suggests, it's about creating the kind of Britalian fusion food they love – out of the box mashups that aren't defined by any real borders. So really, anything is fair game. Instead of traditional Italian, think old school British caff culture meets Italy's best exports.
Inside, forget the usual caff aesthetic though. Instead its pops of bold colours, abstract prints of multicoloured shapes and calypso pink cylindrical cushions on navy and pink bench seating. The restaurant's fun and doesn’t take itself too seriously, which shows on the menu too, where comfort food is the order of the day.
Highlights on the starters include the pizzette crunch – a deep fried pizza slice encased in a hefty crunchy batter, with a stringy gooey middle that's exactly the carb heaven it sounds like. While slices of creamy rolled pork meat topped with lashings of tuna sauce and capers give the porchetta tonnata dish a salty, tangy punch.
Its signature main is the Britalian Carbonara that's already caused a storm online, not only as its made with cream, but they've also deconstructed the dish, taking the egg out and instead plonking a big fried egg right on top of the pasta. It's no doubt a sacrilegious act to any purists, but most tables in sight are ordering it, so they must be doing something right.
The other mainstay is the classic fry up which forgoes fried bread, French toast or even a hash brown and swaps in a disc of pizza dough and comes with Tuscan beans, fennel spiced sausages, black pudding (there is veggie version) and a fried egg. Though the dough fits the theme, it lacks real mop-up ability, which is a key component in any fry up. Elsewhere there's veggie green lasagne, doorstop wedge fish finger sandwiches and weekly changing specials from chicken Milanese, to pan fried mullet or nettle and ricotta ravioli. If you're not carbed out, leave room for the rice pudding arancini – more fried, doughy goodness, as who can say no to that?
It's fun, comforting, slightly familiar while also throwing everything you know and expert about British and Italian food out the window.