Luca was our last meal in London, and one of the best! As I mentioned in my review of the Clerk & Well, where we stayed on our recent trip in July, 2024, the Clerkenwell neighborhood is chock full of delicious eateries, so we rarely had to go far to eat really well near our home base. We were delighted with Luca, a one-star Michelin restaurant, and apart from a bit of a communication snafu at the end of the meal (they are VERY strict about how long you sit at your table, and as Americans, we are definitely not used to this!), I would say our experience here was close to perfect.

Luca is a pretty large restaurant, with an open and airy feel. The decor is borderline mid-century modern, and very well designed with lots of white marble and bronze accents. The whole place is inviting, and my husband thought it had the best atmosphere of any place we ate in London.

Service here was average, and I felt the pacing could have been a bit tighter. Also, considering the time constraints for your table (strictly 2 hours), they should be communicating this a bit more often, especially when you are getting closer to the end of your time. If there are time constraints with the reservation, the table should be more attentively looked after. In our case, there were long stretches in the first hour of no one coming to our table.

It was our last night on vacation, so we were looking to relax and enjoy our time here, and we honestly had no idea about the time constraints, nor were we warned that it was getting close to time. We were unceremoniously kicked out of our table at exactly two hours, hustled to a small booth near the bar at the front of the restaurant, and then ignored for about 30 minutes, even though we had ordered several drinks and snacks at the end. We probably would not have ordered more if we knew our time was up! The vibe of the place does get frenetic later into the evening, and despite the fact that it was a Wednesday night, the place was totally packed full of people. I’m not sure if they have enough staff to deal with the size of the restaurant, actually, and the manager did come to apologize and actually comped our drinks that we ordered in the end to make it right, so they certainly were aware of the mistake. Other than this, though, it’s hard to complain about pretty much anything else about this restaurant.

The food here was truly excellent, and we tried a lot of different things after a very long day of walking and touring around. Luca has one of those menus where it’s impossible to pick just a few things, but we managed in the end. They do offer a four course chef’s menu for 110 pounds, but we opted to go a la carte this time. We were served excellent sourdough bread to start off with, which was complimentary, and very welcome and delicious. I also ordered a charcuterie board, which, for 24 pounds I thought was a lot of meat with a good variety and a good value.

We also ordered the parmesan fries which were a revelation. They were so good, in fact, that we ordered them again at the end of our meal as a snack, since our portions that we intended to share were not as large as expected. They were super crispy on the outside and tangy and melty on the inside. They were the size of small churros, and I’m surprised I managed to grab a photo, we ate them so quickly!

The four of us then split a few pasta dishes which were incredible. The menu changes seasonally, but I think the rigatoni with pork sausage ragu is a staple here. We also had lovely tortelli which were very nice and chewy, with delicate flavor. I would note that some of the pasta dishes here are quite small and definitely not enough for a whole meal, nor for sharing. You can see that there were only four tortelli on the plate, but the rigatoni was a much larger portion. I would ask your server as to the size of the dish before you settle on sharing or not.

The secondi courses were also modestly portioned, and we split the duck and the ribeye between the four of us. The meat was extremely flavorful in both dishes, and expertly grilled.

We ordered several desserts, including tiramisu, a cheese plate, and a dark chocolate delice. The cream of the tiramisu was very light, and seemed to be almost freshly whipped right before it came to the table. I loved the cheese plate, and there were actually enough crackers to accompany the cheese, which is a rarity.

Overall, we really loved Luca, and it was a great place to spend a few hours (but only 120 minutes – not a minute more) on the last night of our trip. I would definitely recommend eating here, as the food quality is excellent, and well deserving of its Michelin star – don’t skip the parmesan fries, and try as many of the pastas as you can!