FOCUS ON 2026
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Employing fresh thinking for a new era of pasta, Pastino restaurant is determined to keep its menu real. We caught up with co-founders Ahmos Wasif & Javed Akhtar. AGILITY & CREATIVITY Looking back at 2025, it’s fair to say it’s been another year of major shifts in hospitality. Customers are more selective about where they dine and how they spend, so you have to stay nimble in these tough conditions. As operators, we’ve all had to keep adapting. For us at Pastino, our first full year of trading has been about understanding the space we’re in, responding quickly and staying focused on what we set out to do: offer genuinely fresh pasta, made properly, at a price people can afford every day. We opened at the end of 2024, having seen a clear gap in the market. London has so many brilliant high-end pasta restaurants, but nobody was offering freshly made pasta in the grab-and-go space. What was available was massproduced or overpriced, and neither worked for the modern customer. No one was making pasta in front of guests, cooking sauces from scratch on-site or delivering that quality at a 38 231_P&P_Dec25_p36-41_Focus_G AB.indd 38
fair price point, especially with so much pressure around rising costs. From day one, we committed to doing things openly and honestly. We moved our pasta machines into the window, had a prep chef in from 6:30am and made every sauce fresh. Nothing is bought in and assembled; we genuinely make it all. A simple bowl of pasta might look effortless but it takes a huge amount of work. AUTHENTICITY MATTERS Pasta is something many people cook at home, so we have to offer dishes they’re not making themselves and often haven’t even heard of. That’s why ingredients matter. If you’re making carbonara, use guanciale, not bacon. You find the best tomatoes you can. The challenge is doing all of that while keeping a bowl at £4-£7, but we’re proud of how we’ve managed it. Hearing customers describe it as ‘proper pasta’ means everything to us.
Regular fresh pasta still leads the way, especially the non-egg version, which customers seem to prefer. Rigatoni is our top seller by a long way. It’s familiar, holds sauce well and people trust it. It also feels like a ‘levelled-up’ version of penne, which helps with recognition. But alongside the classics, we were keen to introduce dishes people don’t tend to cook at home, like Zozzona. Many customers didn’t know it, and that little moment of discovery is important. Pasta is a comfort food at heart on a cold, grey day; nothing beats opening a steaming bowl that feels like a hug. That’s the feeling we try to create. www.pizzapastamagazine.co.uk 17/12/2025 15:55