Mister Lasagna (Italian) – Soho

“The demand for Italian food in London,” says Mister Lasagna’s website, “is huge and lasagna is one of the most popular dishes”.

To this end, it offers an impressive 21 varieties of lasagna based on “traditional Italian cooking”.

And with three branches in London – Soho, Piccadilly and Belgravia – its founder, Alessandro Limonean, is quoted as saying that he “hope[s] to change London’s perception on this classic dish”.

The branch we reviewed was its flagship store on Rupert Street in Soho which smartly and cleverly presents a sizeable portion of its menu on display at the front of the restaurant.

With clean, simple decor and an interior that’s well lit, this 60 seater eatery has two large TV’s at the back, and an outdoor garden theme going on.

In terms of lasagna portions, then they offer the following:

Half £3.50

Regular £5.90

Tris £7.80

With the beef being Halal, we went with these staff recommendations.

Bologneses, Genovese & Mushroom Lasagna – Tris £7.80

So here’s the thing with Mister Lasagna: their dishes are delivered to all three branches from a central hub, and, thus, require to be reheated!

FtL’s Top 5 Lasagna

5. Spinach Lasagna (V) – The generous addition of spinach ensured that familiar earthy taste. However, the pasta was positively dry, and the ricotta cheese brought little to the dish.

Sadly, no amount of the besciamella ‘white’ sauce could salvage this poor excuse of a lasagna.

NOTE: We can confirm that the parmesan sprinkled over the top before the reheating process is, indeed, Parmigiano Reggiano, which contains non-Halal animal rennet.

Bologneses, Pesto, Spinach – Tris £7.80

4. Bolognese Lasagna – Despite this “traditional” bolognese sauce being light in flavour, the lasagna didn’t have that fresh taste.

There was also a disparity of the proportion of the reheated pasta, which was far too much in relation to the rest of the ingredients.

NOTE: Parmigiano Reggiano used.

3. Pesto Lasagna (V) – With a nutty undertone and plenty of pesto sauce, we finally had us a lasagna with some real depth of flavour.

Although this could have done with some more sundried tomatoes, overall, this was decent.

NOTE: Parmigiano Reggiano used.

2. Mushroom Lasagna (V) – This was adjudged the runner-up on account of the plentiful champignon mushrooms which did, indeed, give this a very mushroomy taste.

More importantly, however, and thanks to the besciamella sauce, not only was this not dry, but, as a whole, it was quite tasty.

NOTE: Parmigiano Reggiano used.

1. Genovese – The best by a country mile, and, in all fairness, the only one that we’d consider coming back for.

Tender slow-cooked beef, which had a beautiful smoky undertone, that married very well with the red onions and carrots. Delicious!

This looked far, and we do mean far, better than it tasted.

With the entire thing being premade, this jam pie simply didn’t have any freshness to it.

The pastry was thin, dense and hard in places, whilst the jam insipid and of an inferior kind.

One Lion, in fact, described this as “a Tesco super value”.

Ouch!

We didn’t get the point of this Frittata di Spaghetti, because, in our estimation, this wasn’t really a dessert.

Instead, it was essentially dry pasta that had a light caramel taste to it, but not much else by way of sweetness.

And given that it’s obviously been lying there for God knows how long, it was rock hard and, so, inedible.

Now, although we’ll conclude that this was the best dessert of the trio, that isn’t saying much.

Again a dry one, this Caprese Cake was brittle and overly crumbly in texture.

While managing to deliver a decent chocolatey taste, it also had the flavour of almond running through it.

In all, we were left disappointed by these desserts.