Tagliatelle, slow sugoHOT
16Rich, dark, glossy. Six hours on the stove, beef and tomato, chilli heat if you ask for it.
SUGO
Sauce first.
Manners second.
A red-sauce restaurant and natural wine bar on Dean Street, Soho. The sugo goes on at seven in the morning; everything else — hand-torn pasta, burrata split at the table, spritz at the counter — works around it.
Kitchen 12:00–22:30 · Counter walk-ins only · Room bookings
OPEN LATEFRI + SATtill midnight
Tonight
Open nowKitchen till 22:30
Today's specialTagliatelle, slow sugo — £14 till 19:00
Sugo hour17:00–19:00 · spritz £8
Book a table →
What's cooking?
Four plates that never leave the card. The full menu — every category, every price, every allergen — is one tap away.
Burrata, blistered peppersVGF
13Cold, sweet, smoky. Split at the table over peppers that slumped in the pan. Contains: milk.
Casarecce, broccoli, almondVGN
15Green, nutty, crunchy. Contains: almond — it goes on at the pass, so it stays crisp.
Fusilli, cherry tomato, basilVG
14Bright, jammy, fresh. Tomatoes cooked for nine minutes, not ninety.
Fusilli, cherry tomato — the nine-minute sauce.
Lunch is £14, Monday to Friday
Any pasta, a spritz or a soft, and the bread basket, 12:00–15:00. Counter only, no booking, in and out in forty minutes if the train is calling.
Sunday lasagna — when there is lasagna. It sells out by two.
The tomato run, 6 a.m. — the sauce is only ever as good as this pile.
One pot, all day
SUGO started as a Sunday argument: could one sauce carry a whole restaurant? The sugo here — beef, pork, tomato, a whole onion that dissolves by noon — cooks from seven in the morning until close. It goes on the tagliatelle, under the lasagna, beside the meatballs, and onto the bread you get whether you ordered bread or not.
Everything around the pot stays simple on purpose. Pasta is rolled in the window at eleven, so the lunch table can watch. The wine list is forty bottles of natural wine, priced to be drunk, not studied. The room seats forty-two, the music is up, and the kitchen shouts when your plate is ready — because it usually is within fifteen minutes.
We are not a special-occasion restaurant. We are a Tuesday restaurant: walk in off Dean Street, eat something red, drink something cold, leave happy and slightly stained.
Read the whole story →"If the sauce isn't ready, we aren't open. That's the whole management system."
— Mara Conti, head chef
Having a party?
The back room is yours: one long table, the whole menu family-style, and a spritz trolley that stays in the room. Birthdays, wrap parties, weddings that would rather eat than dance.
- Seats
- 24
- Standing
- 40
- Set menu
- £38
Set menu is per person: antipasti to share, two pastas, the big salad, tiramisu, and coffee. No room hire, no cake fee, your own playlist on the speaker.
Private dining & events →
What's on
Same room, louder nights. Book for ticketed ones; just walk in for the rest.
Thuevery week
Natural Wine Thursday
Three pours from one producer, chosen that morning, £18. The producer's name goes on the board at noon — follow the board, not a mailing list.
Walk in · from 17:00
Frievery week
Spritz & Vinyl
Bring a record, get a spritz on the house. The turntable lives by the counter; the queue for it is the evening's real entertainment.
Walk in · 18:00–late
1st Sunmonthly
Sauce School
Ninety minutes at the stove with Mara: roll pasta, build a sugo, eat both, take a jar home. Twelve places, aprons provided, £45.
Ticketed · book ahead
Who's cooking?
Nine people, one pot. The names you'll hear shouted across the pass:
- Mara Conti — head chef. Owns the sugo and the Sunday lasagna. Fifteen years of red-sauce kitchens, one rule about the sauce, zero patience for garnish.
- Dev Okafor — pasta, mornings. Rolls every sheet by eleven and can tell by touch when the dough needs another minute.
- Lena Fischer — wine & the room. Buys the forty bottles, runs Natural Wine Thursday, and will happily pour you the £9 glass over the £19 one if it suits the plate.
- Tomás Rey — counter & spritz. Sugo hour is his shift: two hundred spritzes a Friday, each with the orange slice cut to order.
From the pass
Notes from the kitchen — what's in season, what's changed, what sold out.
3 Nov
The last of the San Marzanos
This week's tins are the end of the good harvest. What changes on the plate, and why the January sugo will taste a little brighter.
21 Oct
Why the lasagna is only on Sundays
It takes two days and the whole oven. Mara explains the maths, and why we stopped taking pre-orders for it.
7 Oct
Five bottles under a tenner, by the glass
Lena's current list: the chilled red that drinks like juice, the skin-contact that splits the table, and the one to have with the sugo.
Find us, time us
SUGO, 14 Dean Street
Soho, London W1D 3RR
020 7946 0014 · ciao@sugo-soho.example.com
Two minutes from Tottenham Court Road station, four from Leicester Square. Look for the red front and the queue at Sugo hour.
Open nowKitchen till 22:30
| Monday – Thursday | 12:00 – 22:30 | kitchen till 22:00 |
|---|---|---|
| Friday – Saturday | 12:00 – 00:00 | kitchen till 23:00 |
| Sunday | 12:00 – 21:00 | lasagna till it runs out |