07 Oct 2026
James Cameron returns to an old favourite restaurant in the heart of the city centre…
It’s important to stay in touch with old friends. There are people you see everyday and who are intimately weaved into the tapestry of your day-to-day life, people you depend on or who are part of your routine existence and who in many cases you cannot live without. These people are obviously vital.
There are also those people who for whatever reason have dropped out of your cycle, who you used to see all the time but now are on the periphery. These people are also important, for one very good reason. They haven’t heard most of your latest anecdotes.
They will not roll their eyes and check their phones when you start talking about your latest failing body part or your new pet theory about the AI singularity. For this reason it is very important to make the time to keep these relationships alive.
I have been visiting Bellacino’s for years, but intermittently, and yet they did not seem super keen to listen to any of my anecdotes. I put it down to it being a busy Saturday lunchtime. I’m putting the effort in anyway.
I happened to record some of the details of a previous visit to Bellacino’s, over 11 years ago.
Back then it was a fairly standard but pleasant cafe, it charged £6 for a generous plate of chicken and rice and their motto was ‘Keep Smiling!’
Now they are an Italian restaurant and the only rice is in the risotto, but both staff and punters did seem to be pretty chipper on our visit.
Prices have obviously gone up in the intervening decade and change, though they still do a midweek lunch menu of two courses for a very reasonable £14.90.
We were living it up at the weekend, though, so had to go for the full price menu. This is still not too bad, considering how we are living in the economic end-times, with starters clocking in at about a tenner and pizza and pasta in the £15-20 range.
Instead of a starter we went for a ciabatta to share from the Nibbles section of the menu (as I do love to nibble). This set our expectations high. It was a large, warm and crispy loaf, full of the simple yet forbidden pleasures of fresh bread. It was served with some very high quality olive oil, mellow and tangy.
There was also balsamic vinegar listed, but this is where things got confusing. There was clearly something dark sitting at the bottom of the tub, but it seemed to resist all efforts to scoop it up or integrate it with the wider oil community. It would make its presence known on occasion with a sharpness that hit you hard at the back of the throat, but I never really got the sweet fruity flavour.
We both went for pasta for the mains. My partner went for the Pasta Alla Norma, named I assume in honour of Mrs Major. This was a tomato pasta with basil and aubergines, the latter of which were definitely the star of the show. They were soft and cooked to bring out their creaminess, and the only complaint was their scarcity, especially as the dish had been veganised by removing the ricotta.
At the waiter’s recommendation I had gone for the Rigattoni Piccante, large pasta tubes served with a creamy and spicy sauce and a big old burrata splatted right on top like the fried egg in a bibimbap. This was served with ‘nduja spicy sausage, but like the balsamic vinegar earlier it was only detectable via the impact on the flavour, which was pretty spicy. Your palette was immediately cooled by the fresh burrata, though. Overall the creamy sauce had an unusual flavour, not something I’ve really come across before, and whilst it took me a little time to adjust to it I absolutely appreciated the novelty by the end.
I had gone for pasta as I had a race the next day, and was theoretically carb-loading, but I think I may have done Bellacino’s a disservice by not going for a pizza. I already knew that their dough game was off the scale, and the ones going out to other tables caused intense envy.
Pasta on the other hand has to be something really special to make you think that you couldn’t have just knocked it up at home.
Whilst there were a few veggie and vegan options on the main menu, by the desserts it had whittled down to just our old friend, a sorbet which my companion felt was not worth using her self-imposed dessert ration on.
I had no such restriction, though, and went for their cheesecake of the day, which on the day of our visit was Nutella. This has been a bit of an omnipresent flavour (though surpassed lately by Biscoff), but this cheesecake made me remember why I became such good friends with it in the first place.
If I tackle it archaeologically, we start with a base strata of a thick biscuit base, so thick that there was a danger when cutting through it with a spoon that the accumulated kinetic energy might send the whole thing flying. On top of this was the creamy cheese layer, then the sticky and nutty Nutella. The whole thing was topped with a settlement of chopped nuts to give even more texture and nuttiness.
The bar was stocked with an impressive array of Italian wine, as well as a tap for draught Peroni. This isn’t normally a beer that I would get excited about, but I will always prioritise draught beer in a restaurant over bottled. Tap water, meanwhile, came in elegantly designed jugs though could benefit from being chilled.
We finished with mint tea, served with a lovely little Amaretti biscuit. This got me wondering why hazelnuts have the monopoly on chocolate spread, surely an almond and chocolate spread would be worth an investigation.
Perhaps one of the reasons why Bellacino’s has such staying power is its location. On the remarkably balmy September day of our visit they had the whole of the front of the restaurant open so you could see the comings and goings of the denizens of French Row. If they are not exotic enough for you, there are fake windows along the wall so you can pretend that you are looking out on a village on the Amalfi Coast. If you are particularly short-sighted or credible.
The place had a good buzz to it, but this did start to impact on service as the meal progressed.
My cheesecake arrived a long time before the accompanying tea, and I had to spend an awkward few minutes with it regarding me sternly for not eating it.
A restaurant cannot survive on longevity alone, but Bellacino’s is what you want from a proper institution of the city. It’s not afraid to reinvent itself and is in no way stuck in the past, but it is also a comforting presence and a dependable spot to get quality Italian cooking. Why not reach out to someone you haven’t spoken to in the last year and see if they want to meet up for lunch at Bellacino’s? With the way the world is going we can all benefit from a bit more continuity.
