Casa Fabrizi (formerly Alpino Cafe)
Cafe · Islington ·
Italo-British caff serving fry-ups, pasta, and kippers
Italo-British caff serving fry-ups, pasta, and kippers
"This old-fashioned caff has been going since 1959, and it’s an Islington institution. The menu divides into standard caff fare, including enormous breakfasts and Italian dishes. And all at crazy low prices. Big plates of pasta are the favourite at lunchtime, when it’s packed out with locals. And when it’s really busy at mealtimes, you might find yourself sharing a table – but this only adds to the lively atmosphere. The owners manage the crowds well (both when seated and when waiting), and service is speedy. Just mind your time. Other customers need your seat." - Richard Ehrlich
"During the writing of this guide, a sign appeared in the windows of Alpino Cafe, informing customers that it was leaving its 60 year-old premises, owing to a “greedy landlord”. It would be easy to slip into hopeless nostalgia, to lament the loss of the place’s wood-panelled dining room, one of London’s few remaining mid-century artefacts of its kind, or the lightly-seriffed, slender letters of its signage, which stand out so nicely. But that would be overly sentimental – and who’s to say the building’s next occupant will strip everything out? Sure, the new place, which will be called Casa Fabrizi, will be less historical than the original, but the important thing is it’s staying in business. Anyway, the main draw at Alpino is its wonderful Italo-British food, which will doubtless live on at the new place across the street. That means things like spag bol, lasagne, or one of the hundred other pasta, gnocchi and risotto dishes in its book-length menu. Plus there’s its excellent fry-ups too. Like Cafe Cecilia and The Wolseley, Casa Fabrizi ought to remain part of the same exclusive club Alpino was in: restaurants that serve herring for breakfast. So when the place reopens, it’s definitely worth trying those kippers, which are tender fillets of vibrant orange, smoky flesh. With any luck, visitors may still find a band of slim, grey-haired men milling around outside the new restaurant too, inhaling tobacco smoke and thimbles of espresso, just as their cousins are probably doing back home. Casa Fabrizi will open in September 2022." - Isaac Rangaswami
"The planned new incarnation of a long-standing Chapel Market British-Italian caff, set to open at 1 Chapel Market in September after the previous site closed; the move and renaming are intended to avoid passing higher rent costs onto customers. It is expected to continue the same daytime British-Italian offering — pasta, chicken escalopes, smoky kippers and tea — with details about the reopening still pending." - James Hansen
"That the caff, the most British institution there is, has been sustained in London by Italians is not news: Regency and Pellici are the two most famous examples. What has gone relatively unheralded is the type of British-Italian cooking that sits alongside the fry-ups. British Italian cooking culture is taking a mound of perfectly cooked, saucy spaghetti puttanesca that any Italian would be happy with and then adding three liberal dustings of parmesan, a whole chicken escalope and a cup of tea into the mix, a blissful lunch that can be experienced at Dorino Tabrizi’s Alpino’s in Chapel Market, which has been doing the same thing for 80 years without fanfare. The escalope crops up again in bountiful baps and club sandwiches but don’t miss the austere option: grilled kippers, butterflied with dollops of butter, toast, and two poached eggs." - Jonathan Nunn
"‘Italian snack bar’ Alpino has been part of the fabric of Chapel Market since 1959. Lunchtime pasta trade is solid, but it is a cafe above anything and its eggs are firm and sausages plump. Alpino hasn’t modernised much — in aesthetic or product — and continues to fry button mushrooms to that firm, glistening place of perfection. Alpino, too, is seemingly one of few in the game still to serve kippers, which come as is correct: with poached eggs. The service is efficient and the atmosphere — as to be expected in Islington’s Chapel Market — is busy." - Josh Barrie
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