lifestyle
Pasta LOCO
REVIEW
Cousins Domenic Borel and Ben Harvey own and run the incredibly popular Pasta Loco on Cotham Hill. I spoke to Domenic after our meal and found out the background and inspiration behind the restaurant.
“We like to think it’s fine dining with a high-five”
Tell me about the Italian influence on the restaurant…
Well we didn’t want to call ourselves an Italian restaurant to begin with, it was just based on our partly Italian background with our mothers from Lake Como.
We have a place in Como so we go there quite a bit, but the idea is obviously pasta – so completely Italian. We never put on a classic recipe. Ben will take an original recipe from Italy and put his influence on it, he’ll start working on it with the crew in the kitchen and they’ll start tasting it…
Are you a chef as well?
No, no, can’t cook, but I focus on wine and spirits (and high-fiving people).
Have either of you ever lived in Italy?
Ben’s worked in Padua for a year, and that’s kind of where he cut his teeth on making fresh pasta, and where he got that inspiration, that knowledge and skill. And then he did a pop up restaurant in St Werburgh's [In Bristol where Ben lives] called Café Mulino and then he’s also got a pizza oven at the front of his house so he used to do ‘Pizza Tuesdays’ so just throwing around dough and then quickly in the oven so everyone was just watching. Busy and good you know!
How would you describe your restaurant?
The vibe is kind of an extension of our living room, because Ben and I used to throw dinner parties in our living room all the time and just cook for large groups of people, we just thought “why not open a restaurant”?
As you can tell it’s quite relaxed, we play our kind of music you know, we’re all friends and family, there’s a lot of high-fiving going on, there’s a lot of loud talking and all that malarkey. So it’s chilled out but we like to kind of think it’s fine dining with a high-five. You know, we know what we’re talking about, we do pay attention to detail, that kind of thing.
Where are you favourite places to eat and drink in Bristol?
I love going to Paco [Paco Tapas], Pete Sanchez’s Michelin-starred restaurant, our friend is head chef there, our other friends own it as well. They use excellent produce, it’s not cheap but the food is cooked excellently, the service is wicked and the wine list is wicked as well. I love going to Campagnuola as well, it’s old Italian style, family run, and I’ve been going there since I was like, 8 years old.
How do you decide the menu here, do you have a say in that?
Ben will kind of work with the crew in the kitchen, it’s obviously very seasonal as well. We get a lot of our produce sourced locally, from independents. There’s an allotment next to Ben, called Purple Patch so we get our salad from there, whenever they’re ready to give it to us. Then we get daily deliveries from Italy, we get tomatoes, cheeses. It’s a nice balance, it’s an ode to our roots, but it’s also paying respect to local Bristolians, which is kind of what we set out to do. Love the style, love the way we grew up, love the style of food we had, but then we also love Bristol, we love it. So yeah that’s it!
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