"At Tom’s Pasta, the drinks are strong, there’s a thickly layered, TikTok-bait lasagne, and a slightly haphazard supper club feel. Despite that, and the fact that the lasagne doesn’t quite live up to the hype, the permanent pop-up Italian restaurant in Hackney Downs is still a fun place to visit to see and be seen while giving your leopard print gilet its first outing. photo credit: Aleksandra Boruch photo credit: Aleksandra Boruch photo credit: Aleksandra Boruch By day this airy, industrial space is Brunswick East Bakehouse and caters to the needs of Hackney Downs’ start-up contingent. But come evening, fashionable couples sip blood orange spritzes and groups pile onto the big communal table, extinguishing candles and speckling tables with sauce as they reach across for a bite of their friend’s dish. Forgotten drinks are forgiven and mushy lasagne overlooked as conversations increase in volume and a flurry of phone camera flashes capture the beauty of a parmesan snow storm. If a sceney dinner party atmosphere is your priority, you’ll love Tom’s. If you want perfect pasta, we’d go to one of these spots instead. Food Rundown photo credit: Aleksandra Boruch Sourdough Bread & Parmesan Butter This parmesan butter is the stuff of our dairy-based fantasies. There are salty little crystals of cheese dispersed throughout the creamy butter and we always want more than the scoop that arrives on the plate. The bread has the perfect crispy crust, and we appreciate that it’s softer than some teeth-shattering sourdough. photo credit: Aleksandra Boruch Beef Shin Lasagne The TikTok sensation. The dish that flies out the kitchen. It’s undeniably tasty, in the way that any cheesy pasta is tasty. But look a little closer and you’ll realise the sheets of pasta are overcooked and there’s probably a few too many too. The beef shin ragu isn’t saucy enough and that parmesan shower sucks all the remaining moisture out of the dish. Beef Shin Ragu Tagliatelle If you want to try the beef shin ragu, get it with the tagliatelle rather than the lasagne. The pasta is cooked perfectly and the sauce is glossy enough to coat each strand. It’s not as show-stopping to look at as the lasagne, but it tastes a lot better. photo credit: Aleksandra Boruch Tiramisu Our ideal meal at Tom’s goes a little something like this: bread and parmesan butter, blood orange spritz, tiramisu, another spritz. The tiramisu is excellent. It’s got distinctive layers, isn’t too heavy on coffee, and has lots of cream—which is the right amount of cream." - Sinéad Cranna
