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The Independent
18-02-2025
- Entertainment
- The Independent
London is getting a bottomless lasagne restaurant (with a ‘lasangwich' and cheap cocktails)
A new London restaurant is bringing the concept of a 'bottomless' dining experience to a whole new level with all-you-can-eat lasagne. The UK capital's buzzing creative neighbourhood Shoreditch is about to gain yet another distinctive eatery in the form of Senza Fondo (which translates to 'without end' in English), which hopes to live up to its name and provide customers with as much lasagne as they can eat. The Italian-American restaurant is currently taking reservations ahead of its soft opening on 20 February on Rufus Street in Shoreditch, with the hard launch coming soon after on 24 February. While other menu items are available, from a mushroom ragu pasta to small pepperoni and hot honey 'pizzettes', the star of the show comes in layers of slow-cooked beef, pasta sheets and bechamel sauce. The bottomless lasagne is available for £20, allowing customers to eat as many lasagne squares as they can in a sitting. On the new restaurant's social media, Senza Fondo founder Joe Worthington walked through how they make the mighty pasta slice. The process includes slow-cooking beef shin for five hours, using garlic and herb butter in the bechamel, and layering it all up with lasagne sheets and fresh parmesan. Each slice is then wood-fired to create a crispy top, before plating it on top of an extra ladle of bechamel sauce. Also on the menu is also a bottomless artichoke lasagne for the same price. At the helm of the kitchen will be chef Michael Bagnall, who has popped up at several London locations such as Naughty Piglets in Brixton and Bruno Wine Bar in Hackney. There will also be daily off-menu dishes such as burnt lasagne ends. Bottomless lasagne is not the only deal Senza Fondo is offering. If you decide to sit down for a drink before having food, the house negroni will cost only £5 rather than £9.50. Restaurant-goers can spend time sipping their tipples at the 'Kevin Lasagna Bar' found tucked away at the back of the restaurant, which pays homage to Italian footballer Kevin Lasagna, with football memorabilia adorning the bar. 'I always like to arrive at a restaurant early to head to the bar – soaking in the atmosphere, getting a drink and just witnessing the magic of dining out. It gets me all giddy for what's to come,' said Mr Worthington. The restaurant owner has an extensive background in the hospitality industry, having held posts as beverage manager at Australian hospitality groups and at Hawksmoor steak restaurants in the UK. 'It's always been my dream to open my own restaurant,' Mr Worthington said. 'London's restaurant scene is in a great place, but I've seen a gap for bigger plates and bigger energy. 'I believe there is truly nothing better than having dinner with friends, family or anyone in between, and my restaurant will be all about the people.' He adds: 'When great people come together, magic happens – and that's what Senza Fondo is all about. That, and serving the best lasagne in London.' After the launch of Senza Fondo, the restaurant says a lunchtime hatch will soon follow, which will offer a daily limited run of a 'Lasangwich' to Londoners on their lunchbreak – although what makes up a 'lasangwich' is yet to be revealed.
Telegraph
17-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
Bottomless lasagne? London's latest foodie trend fills me with dread
There are some culinary artefacts among the marvels in the British Museum's Silk Roads exhibition. A platter for a flatbread that found its way from Central Asia to China; a wine jug repurposed as a funeral urn; countless ornate goblets and bowls that wound up thousands of miles from their place of origin. Astonishingly, there are even some 1,500-year-old baked goods, found at Astana Cemetery in the Gobi Desert. Insert your own joke about your local bakery. Gazing on these items, imagining the intrepid travellers who conveyed them across unknown or hostile land, I wondered what archaeologists from the future might learn from our food and drink curiosities. Would they marvel at Huel and its ilk, forerunners of the meal replacements they inject into themselves? Or gaze on air fryers with awe, as we do with Stonehenge? Will they revere Charlie Bigham as a deity? It was with these thoughts swirling that I checked my phone after the exhibition and saw an email about a new east London concept: 'bottomless lasagne'. Senza Fondo, which translates as 'without bottom', will open on February 20 offering unlimited lasagne for £20 a head. 'Lasagne lends itself to bulk production,' says the founder, Joe Worthington, who calls himself the 'chief bechamel officer'. 'You sit down, have a big, chunky piece of lasagne and – if you want – you can order it again.' 'Bottomless.' Of all the ominous terms in food – deconstructed, gooey, ultra-processed, nutritionally complete – none inspires as much dread. The word reassures the diner that they will not be judged, no matter how base their urges. The implication is not only that there is no bottom to your bowl, plate, trough or whatever else you are eating from, but possibly no bottom to you, either. As with Casper the Friendly Ghost, food and drink will simply plummet through you. This is not to denigrate 'lavish' or 'indulgent', which are ancient and admirable qualities in a meal. Nor is it to dismiss buffets, which at their best have a democratic sense of generosity and acknowledge that you want to add ham to stuff. No, bottomless is really a 21st-century curiosity. It started with unlimited soft drinks, fries and Pizza Hut pizza at lunchtime. But it achieved its zenith with the 'bottomless brunch' where, for a fixed fee, diners are given as much cheap booze as they can glug within their allotted time. Bottomless brunch not only normalises drinking in the morning, but specifically normalises drinking many low-quality drinks. Hopped up on lowest-common-denominator plonk, the bottomless mob make themselves vulnerable to sides, pudding and other cunning upselling. The bottomless promise also uses the diner's essential stinginess against them. To a certain cast of mind, hearing the word will get the cogs whirring. 'I will beat the system,' they think. 'I will be the outlier.' They crave a bargain, rather than endless layers of bechamel, ragu and pasta. Nobody has ever had a serving of lasagne and still felt hungry. That's the point of lasagne. One might as well offer bottomless mashed potato or risotto or bread and butter pudding. When archaeologists unearth the 'Senza Fondo' menu buried in the mud by Old Street, they will wonder about our priorities.
