Ida is a neighbourhood restaurant in Queens Park. Situated in a pretty, grade II listed cornershop, it offers home-cooked Italian food six days a week to hungry locals and regulars.
Almost uniquely in London restaurants, Ida’s pasta is made freshly every day and rolled entirely by hand. A dying art even in Italy, hand-rolled pasta is infinitely superior to anything produced by a machine, as its rougher texture traps and holds sugo on to its surface.
Ida is owned and run by a husband and wife team, Simonetta and Avi, whose Italian roots are Tuscany and Le Marche, respectively. While neither had any experience in the restaurant business, (Simonetta is a novelist, while Avi is an engineer) , Avi, in particular grew up in a family where food is sacrosant; indeed many of the dishes at Ida - in particular the hand-rolled pasta - were learned by watching his mother and aunts in the kitchen!
Our customers tell us that eating at Ida is like being transported to Italy for a few hours; while our relative innocence regarding the London restaurant scene means that we cook for our customers as though they were guests in an Italian home! In the seven years we have been open, we have celebrated the weddings, engagements, christenings, birthdays and even book launches of our customers, many of whom are regulars along with their families and friends.
Fay Maschler declared Ida “the ideal neighbour, not only to borrow a cup of sugar from, but to drop in on for a plate of hand-rolled pasta”, while Charles Campion calls it “a hidden gem”, naming it one of the top five London Italian restaurants in his 2009 guide.