05La Famiglia in Hamburg’s St. Georg district is a constant address for authentic Italian food in the Hanseatic city. As soon as you enter the small restaurant you have arrived in Italy. The charm of the premises corresponds to that of Italian pizzerias as we know them from the seventies. Especially the walls are plastered in a very memorable way and the decoration is based on pictures of the family or long-gone times.

The owner Antonio Filippone originally comes from the Italian region of Calabria and has been in Hamburg for several decades. Since 1975 “la mamma” has been personally in the kitchen here, which is certainly another reason for the long-standing success of La Famiglia. Calabria is known for its good cuisine, the delicious red onions, the piquant hot tomato sauce and last but not least for the tartufo which originates from this region.

I was served by Guiseppe, a son of Antonio, who also advised me to drink an excellent red table wine – a wine that did not distract from the essential, but still tasted good. The service was consistently friendly, fast and had the typical Italian touch.

First of all, there was of course also a proper carpaccio with fine truffle slices, a good Parmesan and – very important – the whole thing WITHOUT mountains of rocket. It has become a real bad habit in many restaurants to “throw” huge amounts of rocket on the carpaccio or the pizza – but not here.

My main reason to visit La Famiglia, however, was the mussels so much praised there. Meanwhile it has become difficult to find a “ristorante” where the chef knows how to prepare the traditional way for both the tomato and white wine brew. At La Famiglia this still works – the mussels were fantastic and reason enough to visit that restaurant.

Of course, I couldn’t leave the restaurant without trying a portion of linguine – here I was given a special creamy porcini mushroom sauce that is not to be found on the menu – a delicious improvisation, thank you very much.

The La Famiglia has a quite appealing website that also supports “https” – which makes sense when using the existing reservation form. Unfortunately, however, some texts (e.g. “Reserve table”) appear incorrectly formatted across browsers and protrude into the graphics. Furthermore, it is not clear why the link at the bottom of the page to “Steindamm – Berliner Tor” is there. It would be a good idea to revise and correct the website.