Old Town’s Ladle feels like a little nook, one of those places you didn’t’t know you needed until you find yourself there.
In this tiny room, lights trail and twinkle, and busy George St suddenly seems far away. The antique dealers, the ‘Tabac’-signed cigar merchant, the ancient timber-framed pubs, the chi-chi boutiques. Even the second-hand bookshop which at night becomes a Thai restaurant, your table tucked among its shelves: they all seem to recede.
Inside, colours range from Prussian blue to aubergine, with splashes of canary yellow and framed prints providing daubs of colour. Just six indoor tables means it feels very much set up for intimate dinners, with seating for larger group outside for warmer days and a small sofa if you’re dropping in for a sharpener. Do: their Negroni is recommended, and particularly punchy.
The menu is just one page- a good sign, potentially, implying focus: seven pasta mains which change periodically, and always with an eye on inclusivity, so you’ll find vegetarian and vegan choices, and gluten-free pasta and bread.
Olives, stuffed with meat (‘all’ascolana’) and breaded and fried, are a diverting nibble (and I do so enjoy a diverting nibble) with cocktails.
There’s sheer comfort in a bowl of orecchiette alla Norcina. This is the one you reach for after a long day, one of those soothing, reassuring bowls where for a few minutes nothing really that bad can happen.
Those ‘little ears’, cosseted by white wine and cream, are bolstered by the bite of cavolo nero and little nuggets of fennel-rich Tuscan sausage adding heft to a bowl of quiet pleasures. A taster of the beef short rib ragù is full-bodied, vinous, but staying the right side of heavy.
What is billed as ‘creamy crab and ‘nduja’ underwhelms when it arrives. Visually, anyway: it seems a little pallid, a little staid, for the description. I needn’t have worried: with a few twirls of the fork it becomes something else entirely, something richly aromatic, bold with the rust-coloured shades of a seaside sunset. Suddenly, it becomes a compelling mix of sea and land, the heat and sweetness of ‘nduja spice and both white and brown crab meat coming together.
A quietly lovely thing. So: let’s call it a moment of… premature adjudication, apologise profusely, and move on, shall we?
I’d like to come back here in really bad weather, B suddenly says as we finish. She’s right, of course: it would be easy to imagine being very content here, snug and warm, as umbrellas turned themselves inside out on George Street. To huddle in Ladle, as it were. All of this comes from a kitchen just a metre and a half square. That’s quite the feat, let alone the toilet needing you to stoop if you’re anywhere over six feet.
As chance would have it, we do: the weekend reports from across Wales and the South West make grim reading, but despite escaping those extremes Hastings is windswept, grey and squally.
Ladle it is, then.
How impressive are these meatballs? This pork and beef mix, loosely-bound and deftly seasoned, is impressive. It would be more than my life is worth to you they reminded me of my (Castilian) mother’s albondigas, from a recipe which has been in my family for generations: so I’ll just say that these put me very favourably in mind of them and leave it at that.
Again, that sense of being tucked away from it all, free to indulge in the good stuff. The specials board today is the prize: tagliolini, a tumble of clams in their shell, squid, mussels, prawns. Silky pasta, dyed jet black with squid ink in a white wine and cream sauce, gently scented with garlic. It’s one to linger over.
If that’s a success, mine is even more so. A rich porcini mushroom sauce, bolstered by roasted hazelnuts and truffle oil, dressing fat ribbons of silken pasta. It’s a compelling thing, a celebration of all things bosky, for just £15, and followed rather well by a rich tiramisu which neatly avoids the trap of over-sweetness while bringing that welcome bitterness. The bill arrives with a couple of Swizzel’s double lollipops and a loyalty card: buy eight pastas, get your next one free.
Out of a few turbulent years for hospitality, owners Alex and George have made their longstanding love affair with Italy into something quietly lovely: somewhere you can nestle for a while.
‘Nestle’. A Ladle word cloud would give you huddle, cuddle, snuggle. (We’ll leave ‘fondle’ as optional, depending on the company.) Ladle’s mission, without ever trying to be the all-singing Italian overburdened with a too-busy menu, is a simple one: generous bowls of well-made pasta and some interesting things to drink, in a place you’ll feel properly looked after.
This feels like a restaurant for all seasons. Fancy a sunny day people watching? Pick Ladle and enjoy the unpredictability of an Old Town crowd: our first visit was soundtracked by a clutch of South American musicians, their libidinous rhythms thrumming insistently in your blood. Look, there’s the man decked out in full pirate regalia. (And no, it wasn’t even Pirate Weekend. I checked.) A grey, windswept seafront day? Well, we’ve covered that bit, haven’t we?
Ladle feels like exactly the sort of restaurant Hastings needs, in the sense that it feels like the sort of place every town needs: intimate, cosy, welcoming, quietly confident. It’s the sort of place which puts you in a good mood, where you get that sense of being in the right place. And that makes it worth knowing about.
59 George St, Hastings TN34 3EE
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