Luca

Luca comes from the same team behind Shoreditch’s two-Michelin-starred Clove Club, and it would have been easy for that pedigree alone to fill the room. Instead the kitchen has built a genuinely distinct identity — British produce interpreted through an Italian lens, with pasta doing most of the heavy lifting — that’s earned its own Michelin star rather than borrowing the Clove Club’s shadow.

The Room

A sprawling dining room dressed in a visual language borrowed from 1950s Italian graphic design — clean typography, warm materials, more than 125 covers without ever feeling like a banqueting hall. The front bar, where the kitchen’s famous parmesan fries are served, is worth arriving early for on its own terms, a proper destination bite rather than a holding pen before the main dining room opens up.

What to Order

The parmesan fries at the bar are the dish most people talk about first — savoury, churro-shaped, crisp outside and molten within — and they’re worth ordering even if a full dinner isn’t the plan. Once seated, the pasta is where the kitchen’s actual ambition shows: mezzi paccheri with a pork sausage ragù sharpened by anchovy and freshened with mint, and taglierelle with rabbit, lardo, and green olives, richer and more considered than either ingredient list suggests on paper.

When Italian white truffle is in season, the mafaldine — pistachio pesto, preserved lemon, a voluptuous butter sauce, shaved truffle on top — is the dish to build a booking around specifically.

The Drinks List

An Italian-leaning wine list with real depth beyond the obvious Chianti-and-Barolo defaults, and staff genuinely willing to talk through a lesser-known producer if asked. The bar’s cocktail list, separate from the dining room’s wine service, is worth a visit in its own right alongside the parmesan fries.

What You Will Pay

A proper tasting-menu-adjacent dinner here runs at the top of the London Italian market, consistent with the Michelin star and the ambition of the cooking — this is a destination-dinner price point, not a casual weeknight one, though the bar’s parmesan fries and a glass of wine make a genuinely affordable way to experience the kitchen without the full commitment.

The Verdict

Book for the pasta, arrive early enough to eat at the bar first, and ask specifically about truffle-season specials if visiting between autumn and winter — that’s when the kitchen’s ambition is most on display. St John Street’s other big Farringdon draws (St. John chief among them) are all a short walk away, and Luca holds its own in that company rather than trailing behind it.

What’s Being Said

Following a Michelin-starred sister restaurant is a harder brief than starting fresh — every comparison is automatic, and a lesser kitchen would have coasted on the connection. Luca instead built something different enough (Italian technique, British sourcing, pasta-forward rather than the Clove Club’s own register) that it earned its own star rather than inheriting credibility, and the parmesan fries alone have become a genuine London food landmark independent of the main dining room’s reputation.

Head chef Robert Chambers came up through the Royal Automobile Club’s own fine-dining kitchen, Locanda Locatelli, The Square under Phil Howard, and Brett Graham’s The Ledbury before taking on Luca’s kitchen in 2016, and that pedigree shows in how disciplined the British-sourcing side of the menu stays even as the Italian technique gets more ambitious — this isn’t a kitchen using “British produce” as a marketing line while the actual cooking drifts toward a generic modern-European register.

Since opening in 2016, Luca has held onto its identity clearly enough that a decade on, it still reads as a distinct proposition rather than one more well-regarded Clerkenwell Italian among several. St John Street itself has become one of the more interesting single streets for serious eating in London over that period, and Luca is a real part of why that reputation has stuck rather than just riding alongside it.

The rating this review settles on — four and a half — reflects a kitchen that’s kept a clear identity on a street that’s become genuinely competitive since it opened.