After eight years of cooking Sicilian-inspired pasta all over the UK, Pasta Slut has hung up her apron. “When I was 28, it was cute, but when you’re getting on for 38, it’s not as cute,” chef and former Pasta Slut Hayley Meredith tells Broadsheet. “I’ve outgrown it. I want something more permanent.”
Her next chapter is Macchina, which opened permanently in Walthamstow wine shop and bar Hometipple on August 19 following an eight-month residency in the space. Meredith is still rustling up Sicilian-inspired dishes, but this time she’s here to stay.
The Orford Road spot has been refurbished, and now channels 1990s Italy with sunshine-yellow walls, black leather banquettes and sultry black and white photos of Madonna and Monica Bellucci. The retail element of Hometipple has been tucked away, making extra space for around 60 people across its bar, dining room, covered patio and pavement tables.
In Walthamstow Village, the latter must be shared with two dominant occupants. “I’m constantly dodging prams and dogs, but I love the neighbourhood feel,” Meredith says, laughing. “Everyone’s really friendly. You can talk to everyone on the street. It’s like going back in time when people were nice, you know.”
Meredith launched Pasta Slut in Bristol in 2018, after discovering that she enjoyed feeding a huge number of pals all at once. “I don’t like to use the word supper club because they weren’t that, it was just big gangs of friends,” she says.
A friend with a pub handed over the kitchen and the project grew into a catering and events business. Meredith cooked at festivals – “hectic, absolute chaos” – and ran residencies in cities including Manchester and Liverpool. Pasta Slut’s longest stint was a two-year residency at the George & Heart House in Margate, before she returned to London and eventually brought Macchina to Hometipple.
The new name means car or machine in Italian and can also be used to describe somebody who operates with relentless efficiency. Besides the different name and the permanent home, not much else is changing, though. “It’s still sticking to serving Sicilian-inspired home-cooked food with absolutely nothing pretentious about it,” Meredith says. “We have a very small seasonal menu.”
Meredith’s mother’s family comes from Grotte, a town in the Sicilian province of Agrigento, where she spent every summer while growing up. Her pasta al pomodoro with stracciatella is a particularly personal dish – she ate it almost daily as a child. “I love our pomodoro,” she says. “It makes me so happy when I cook it. Every single plate that goes out makes me smile.”
While the menu will often change, you might find arancini al ragù, porchetta with greens and roast potatoes, and a chicken Milanese caesar salad, which is one of the restaurant’s bestsellers. A whole butterflied chicken breast is coated in panko, parmesan and oregano, deep-fried, then covered with heavily dressed Caesar leaves, more parmesan and fresh anchovy.
There’s tiramisu for dessert and, as autumn approaches, there’ll be a mushroom risotto made with produce from Bora & Sons, the greengrocer across the road. “We can just trot over the road every day and see what’s fresh and what’s good,” Meredith says.
Hometipple’s existing wine selection is joined by a short selection of classically inclined cocktails including a marsala Negroni, limoncello spritz and lambrusco spritz.
Meredith is particularly excited about learning the names, habits and preferred pasta orders of the people coming through the door. “My goal now is to really get to know the customers, and have repeat customers,” she says. “I want to have people coming back again and again, to a place where they feel completely relaxed and at home.”
Macchina
34 Orford Road E17 9NJ
02037720114
Hours:
Tue to Thu 6pm–9pm
Fri & Sat midday–3pm, 6pm–9pm
Sun midday–5pm
