Carluccio’s takeaway review: Great Italian pasta for less than the price of a sandwich

Carluccio’s Italian restaurant was established in London by Antonio and Priscilla Carluccio in 1999. It’s now a sizeable business with a large base of franchisees. It opened in Dublin on the corner of South Anne Street and Dawson Street in March 2008.
I read in The Hungry Student’s Guide to Lunch, an article penned by Théo Martin for Trinity College Dublin’s University Times in October 2022, that Carluccio’s had a student deal of one packed box of pasta for €5.50. It started more than 10 years ago when Antonio Carluccio introduced a deli section to the restaurant, selling meats and cheeses, with everything cut and weighed to order. The deli is now gone, but the takeaway opens on weekdays, offering a variety of pastas and a small selection of sides (chicken Milanese and focaccia). The pastas are normally penne based. There are two sizes of pasta boxes: half (€5.50) and large (€8.50).
There are a few outside tables if you are lucky enough to snag one, otherwise it’s takeaway only.
Three half boxes of pasta: luganica (spicy sausage); aubergine and mozzarella; and speck, blue cheese, bacon and courgette; as well as one slice of garlic bread and one slice of focaccia.
Very efficient. You order at the counter, wait while the pasta is filled into the containers, and pay. Be sure to get there before 1pm as the queue of students starts to form rapidly. Clearly this is not a secret with students and local office workers.
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This is proper, no-nonsense food designed to fill you up rather than whisk you back to your last jaunt to Tuscany. Portions are properly generous. The spicy sausage with penne is just that: loads of sausage, with a good kick of flavour. The blue cheese penne is carbonara adjacent, but with blue cheese and courgette – rich, creamy, and with the smoky hit of bacon. The veggie option with aubergine comes swimming in a decent tomato sauce, with gooey mozzarella tucked between the penne. The focaccia, though, is a bit too much on the bready side; it’s fine, but lacks that open crumb and crunchy exterior. Cut in half, griddled, and turned into garlic bread, it fares much better.
Everything is packaged in cardboard or wrapped in paper. Cutlery is a compostable wooden fork.
Lunch for three people was €20.50: three half boxes of pasta, €16.50; garlic bread, €1.50; and focaccia, €2.50.
Takeaway only, open Mon-Fri, noon-3pm.
Yes, and to quote Théo Martin: “you can always rely on Carluccio’s if you’re hungry and penne-less”.