Ida is the ideal neighbour

Its simple style with windows half-curtained in lace-trimmed linen, open kitchen, tile-floor and higgledy-piggledy display of pictures, posters, signage and an embroidered Rokeby Venus that Velazquez might have trouble recognising fits neatly and sweetly into the area.

Avi and Simonetta Reichenbach are proud to state that all their egg pasta is hand-rolled, a rarity these days even in Italy. Evidently a lady comes in several time a week to mix and knead the dough. As it rests, and before she flattens it with a huge rolling pin, she whispers a secret prayer. Maybe it wasn't answered in the case of the tagliatelle al ragu because the strands of pasta were undercooked and chewy, but the sauce, complete with chicken livers, was excellent, properly long-simmered.

Linguine all'amatriciana was blameless. There was an agreeable freshness to the tomatoes in the sauce and its recipient - a friend who is a chef - noted that the pancetta had been properly sweated to release the fat. Whether when in Rome - its hometown - they would use linguine for this assembly is another matter.

A first course of stewed polpetti (baby octopus) featured wee creatures which had offered up something of their latent inkiness to the pungent sauce. He who had chosen that followed it with straccetti con carciofi (strips of rump steak with artichoke). It was a good concept but the meat had been cooked too long.

As well as the egg pasta, bread and ice creams are also home-made at Ida (named in honour of Avi's mother) and the meringue in Mont Blanc is described as "hand-baked".

That same dessert was fine, toothsome and yielding as it should be. There is a very short wine list from which our choice, a Salice Salentino at £17.90, seemed briefly unavailable, but a bottle was found. And then, thank heavens, another one.

Ida is the ideal neighbour, not only to borrow a cup of sugar from, but to drop in on for a plate of hand-rolled pasta.

IDA
Fifth Avenue, London, W10 4DT