In this written series, we find out the personal histories behind some of London’s favourite Italian delicatessens.
Working in a job that requires you to look at photographs and videos of pasta for several days a week sounds like heaven, until you discover it also makes you permanently hungry. On the days I head to Pasta Grannies HQ in Richmond, I’m in luck; my carb cravings are rapidly solved by a short walk around the corner to Debraggio, just off Richmond Green. And once I taste their pork meatballs with spaghetti aglio olio pepperoncino, it’s tempting to make the 1.5-hour commute from my house for five days a week instead of one or two.
Debraggio is a family affair with loyal returning customers. The stylish royal blue storefront has been run by Deborah and husband George for just over twenty-one years. The deli has changed in that time —once with a restaurant upstairs, and then famous for turning out around a hundred ciabattas a day, while also selling cold cuts, cheese, and raw ingredients to passers-by. Today, the heart remains the same but the focus is on pre-cooked food, with a delicious range of pasta and salads to take away, as well as shelves packed with dry-store Italian artisan goods for purchase. Plus, just in case that wasn’t keeping them busy? They run catering jobs on the side, designing menus and delivering food for private events, parties, and business functions.
I sip a cappuccino and head upstairs with Deborah to what was previously the restaurant to conduct the interview. The recording is soundproofed by a multitude of cardboard boxes and upside-down chairs. Tables up here are no longer used for service but for storage. There are still boards with specials listed menus on walls; evidence of the rapid business evolution during the pandemic. George and Deborah are utterly adept with change. “We closed it after COVID. We also used to do ciabattas; about 100 a day, but slowly that declined, so we stopped and shifted our focus to more cooked food and salads,” Deborah notes. They’ve pivoted their business and they’re enjoying the new direction. “It works. And we love it!” she says; namely, the additional time they now have to spend with deli customers. “Before, we’d never have the time to spend with deli customers. Now we’ve got time to chat to them about wines, balsamic, and suggested recipes.” Deborah goes above and beyond; she has essentially become an educational executive chef for many local residents’ date-night creations. And happily gets the gossip on her customers’ next visit.
Iit’s easy to see why people keep coming back. Deborah is kind, infectiously high-energy, and charmingly open. It’s not long before we’re discussing the myth of “the Italian salad”. I come from a family of salad-seekers who repeatedly roll their eyes every summer at the lack of vegetables in restaurants. Veg-centric meals aren’t the Italian way; they’re more like an accessory. We laugh at the UK’s perception versus reality. “When you go to Italy, especially cafés and restaurants, there are hardly any vegetables on the menu. We spent four weeks in Sicily and literally had to beg for a plain salad; just leaves and tomatoes, no cheese, no egg. They always want to add cheese, carrot, or corn.” And as a savvy businesswoman, deeply aware of consumers’ needs and wants, she clocked the current health-conscious population and saw culinary opportunities. “Previously it was one salad a day; usually the classic caprese. Now there are eight or nine different salads across the week, all built on instinct, not formulas,” she tells me. “It started with leftover Sunday roast vegetables. I realised they tasted amazing cold.”
The dry-store products on their shelves are almost all Italian: olive oils from Puglia and Sicily, wines from Sardinia and Tuscany. “Sicilian olive oil is the best,” Deborah states firmly. Yet their cooking is infused with other Mediterranean influences too. Deborah is Sicilian-Maltese; George is Greek. Their food reflects a blending of cultures; the best parts exchanged from different cuisines. And, the fusion dishes tend to be the biggest hits. “One of our most popular dishes is stuffed peppers. It’s inspired by Greek and Middle Eastern cooking with Italian flavours. I learned a lot from George’s mum. She’s 84 now; you know, all about cooking by instinct rather than by recipes.”
I tell her the passing on from one generation to the next is similar to what we’re up to around the corner at Pasta Grannies HQ, documenting recipes beyond the kitchens of grandparents. “Yes! We cook like grannies! By eye, by smell, by taste. Even though we write recipes down, they’re not gospel. This kind of cooking is learned by watching and feeling, not measuring.” Deborah’s pomodoro sauce is the real crowd-pleaser, but the recipe? Well, she’d have to show you. She’s made it daily for twenty-one years and it’s not written down anywhere. Deborah giggles at the idea of replication. “If someone followed my recipe exactly, it would never taste the same. You’re not using the same tomatoes, the same salt, the same water. Mostly, you’re not using the same instincts.”
Food has always been the family language for both of them. Both Deborah and George grew up in catering families. Her mother ran a restaurant in Malta, and George’s parents owned a restaurant in the UK. They met while Deborah was working in George’s father’s restaurant before attending catering college. Not long afterwards, they had their first child and opened Debraggio together. Their children love food but not the lifestyle. Deborah understands: “Catering is incredibly hard work.” Like many delis, there’s some time to down tools in the summer. During August, Debraggio usually closes for four weeks. Richmond empties, the locals travel, and Deborah, George and the family do too, between Malta and the Greek islands.
Talking of hard work, I manage to squeeze in a visit before the deli’s busiest time: Christmas. “We do a lot more gifts, a lot of hampers, and a LOT of panettone,” she tells me. They stock Filippi, a brand with such a loyal following that Richmond dwellers place orders months in advance, as early as October. “People say: ‘They’re in! Can we buy some now?!’”
Yet the products aren’t the only pull, I reckon. The busy trade here is less about products and more about a feeling of belonging too. “They don’t come for products anymore. Supermarkets sell everything. They come for connection.” Part of the logic behind stopping cold cuts was because people can buy them in the supermarket, and the margins weren’t high enough to keep them going. Home-cooked food, however, is something the supermarkets can’t import. Friendly faces like Deborah and George’s with real-life spoken reheat instructions? Absolutely not.
There is a friendly gentleman in the window every single day. He’s been coming here every day since they opened. Debraggio is a place of real belonging; you only need to spot him to realise that. “People even mistake him for the owner,” Deborah laughs. If you really want to know the shop-window gossip, he’d be your man. Yet this place isn’t limited to long-term regulars. Younger couples in their mid-twenties now come in for a glass of wine, talk about their lives; some of them show Deborah their wedding dresses. Families who once arrived with teenagers now return with children of their own. People are greeted by name. They are remembered. They are friends. “We’ve watched people grow up, get married; it’s like extended family,” she says.
As for home life? The few hours of it they seem to have, Deborah and George rarely cook what they sell. No pasta. It’s a lot of grilled fish, grilled meats, vegetables, beans, smoked pulses; simple Greek and Italian “peasant” foods. Her soup, however, is not only served to the deli but nourishes the whole community. Deborah boils whole chicken carcasses and bones for hours to make proper stock, then gives it away to older people living alone in the local area and to anyone who is unwell, especially in the cold months.
There’s more formal business streams to her outside catering too; weddings, parties, and sometimes enormous sit-down dinners for hundreds of people. I am exhausted hearing about her jumping from days in the deli to cooking for the masses in evenings, on summer nights and weekends. She shares how she once catered a three-course meal for 430 guests at Putney Rowing Club, working unrelenting hours with barely any sleep and George supporting behind the scenes. “I thrive in that kind of madness,” she says with a smile.
One thing is for certain: this lovely pair might cook like grannies but they certainly don’t live life at granny pace.
Visit Debraggio: 1 Duke St, Richmond TW9 1HP. View their website: www.debraggio.com
Do you have a favourite deli you’d like us to visit? Let us know. If you liked this, there’s more Behind the Counter content on the Pasta Grannies website. Or, if you fancy going further afield why not see other notes from our travels on our blog.
