La Lupa - West End

At least one night a week, Dr L and I have been trying to make an effort to go out after work for date night. This came about for a multitude of reasons such as not wanting to become hikikomoris as well as wanting to go out a bit more to support local businesses in addition to finding content for this blog. With that in mind, we took the (very long) walk out to La Lupa, situated on the further side of West End for a quiet dinner.

Their menu was fairly short and there was a selection of pasta and pizza. Having heard quite good things about both, we opted for one of each. 

Unlike some of the other Italian places we have been to recently, bread was not complimentary. We ordered a serve of daily baked bread and evo. The price was a little high for what it was but at least we had four slices. The bread was quite crusty and delicious, but it would have been a nice touch if we could have ordered two slices instead of the full serve of four.

Having heard so many good things about their pizzas, I opted to try the Tartufata which was topped with mozzarella, parmesan cream, sausage and truffle tapenade. Although it wasn't as good as Julius, we really enjoyed the pizza. Usually truffle pizzas are vegetarian or at least have a very small amount of meat, but this was very generous in its sausage content. The truffle flavours were quite strong, strong enough in fact to overcome the smoky sausage flavours which made for a flavoursome but balanced dish. The base was thin and fluffy at the edges but quite soggy in the middle.

When we have a white based pizza, we always like to balance it out with a red based pasta. Our pick of the night was the Pappardelle with slow cooked beef cheek ragu, Grana Padano and parsley. For a main, the size was somewhat lacking. Having said that the taste was fantastic. The pasta was freshly made and cooked tender but not soggy. I liked the rich tomato of the sauce and the abundance of shredded meat, it was quite delicious. To wrap up, it was a nice chance to try somewhere I've been interested in for a long time, but with the fierce competition nearby and across the river, they'll need to step up their game for us to return. Dr L was notably not impressed with the mandatory card charges for both credit and debit, which is a point that had to be added.

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