Our story · Since 1985
Napoli, Chelsea,
Puerto Banús.
A restaurant that has fed the same marina for thirty-two years is not a concept. It is a habit.
NapoliChapter one · where it comes from
The family is Neapolitan. So is the cooking.
Everything La Pappardella does starts in Naples — the city of pizza, of tomato and basil, of long tables and short tempers about how a thing should be made. The family came from there, and the kitchen has never really left.
It shows in small ways. In the way the dough is handled. In a Fiat 500 hung on the wall of the dining room in the colours of the Italian flag, with a Napoli number plate still bolted to the front.
477605 NA — on the dining room wall
1985Chapter two · Chelsea, London
The first La Pappardella opens in London.
Not Marbella. Not Naples. Chelsea — in the middle of a London that was only just learning what proper Italian food tasted like.
The name went up, the pasta went out, and a family business began. Four decades later, that date still sits under the logo: since 1985.
1993Chapter three · Muelle de Honor
They came to Marbella for the sun and the sea.
And then took the hardest address in the marina: the front line of Puerto Banús, on the Quay of Honour, where the biggest boats moor and the promenade never stops moving.
A restaurant on that stretch of water has to be good every single service. There is no quiet corner to hide in — the terrace is the pavement, and the pavement belongs to everyone.
La Pappardella has held it since 1993. Through every version of Puerto Banús, at the same door, under the same name.
Chapter four · the people
Always strong, always together.
That line, and that drawing, are the first page of the La Pappardella menu. Before a single dish, before a price — the family.
Lucia and Tony run the Puerto Banús restaurant today, keeping the Neapolitan spirit of the place in a room that is loud, warm and entirely unbothered by fashion. That is the whole management philosophy, and there isn't a second one.
Chapter five · the dish
How a pasta became the name of the place.
The home of Sexy Pasta
Sexy Pasta has been on this menu since the beginning: tomato, cream, grana padano, pesto and mozzarella. Simple enough to describe in a breath, and impossible to leave off the list.
Over the years people stopped asking for the restaurant and started asking for the pasta. So the restaurant took the hint, painted THE HOME OF SEXY PASTA on its own wall, put it on the staff shirts, and got on with cooking it.
On the shirts, on the wall, on the menu
TodayChapter six · the room
Same family. Same water. Full every night.
Southern Italian noise, a menu that runs from burrata to lobster, staff who will take your order in four languages, and a view that still stops people mid-sentence.
