Bunga Bunga in London takes you to the heart of Italy

Bunga Bunga London – Restaurant Review

What: Italian restaurant

Where: Chelsea

Food: 8/10

Service: 8/10

Occasion: We think this is a great place to catch up with friends, it is a fun environment to be around. But if you really want to do something unusual for a date then Bunga Bunga would be a good choice, it can be a bit noisy for a first date if you sit close to the stage. From Friday to Saturday there is a club upstairs from about 10.30pm, we haven’t been yet but apparently it gets really busy.

Rumour has it that ‘Bunga Bunga’ is the term Silvio Berlusconi uses to refer to celebrations devoted to sensual enjoyment at his house. The name of the restaurant is a tongue-in-cheek reference to this.

With this in mind, we didn’t know what to expect when we decided to go and have dinner at this London based restaurant. But we soon discovered that it takes you to the heart of Italy. The decor is anything but simple, with old wooden floors and tables, motorbikes hanging from the ceiling and picture frames of Italy’s finest icons gave the venue a lot of character. Listening to the strong flirty Italian accents and eating the authentic cuisine gave us the feeling that we were in Rome instead of London.

To add some more excitement to our night there was a live band performing a mixture of english and Italian songs. Apparently there are different musicians every night, such as pop, jazz and even an Elvis Presley impersonator.

We went there on a Wednesday evening, which is the pasta night (Pasta Wednesday). We really enjoyed our starters, we tried five different dishes and loved each one. The food was wholesome with a lot of flavour. Especially, the raw courgettes, fresh chilli and pecorino and toasted pine nuts salad and the smoked mozzarella and confit tomato burschetta.

Have you ever tried something and didn’t really like it but the more you tasted it the better it got? This was what happened with our mains. At first we thought the pasta was too cheesy (especially the one with four different cheeses). But the more we had of it the more we liked it. To add flavour to the food a lot of herbs are used such as basil, parsley and cilantro and the restaurant uses mostly organic food.

If you are planning to pay the restaurant a visit then we suggest that you check out their diary so you know what they have on.

Upstairs there there are two more rooms. The deco of the stairs that take you to the rooms try to replicate a scene from the Sistine Chapel. One room is designed for private celebrations which anyone can hire (L’osservatorio Private Room) and the other for partying (Eurovision Song Content Room).

———————————