11 February 2026

Arsenal fans are not needy! They just want an expensive lunch

Their vilification as effete elitists is undeserved

The men around me are not haunted, per se, but the neuroses of middle age are apparent. Not many of them have hair. Most have serious jobs at newspapers or banks. They have all politely hung their red and white scarves over the backs of those rickety, wooden chairs. It is a Tuesday night in north London and by some act of God I scored a walk-in table for one. This is Trullo, in the shadow of the Emirates. Arsenal are playing Chelsea in two hours.

It’s not easy being an Arsenal fan. And no, not because of that four bed in Newington Green; and no, not because their boys look more likely to win the league than ever – with all that serviceable, route-one gameplay. And shut up about the wine cellar! It’s like you haven’t even realised they’re all sitting on a depreciating asset. No, the real affliction of the Arsenal fan? Their character is impugned left, right, centre – look at these effete, emotional, hysterical, pearl-clutching weirdos, the critics say. They all speak two and a half languages and they can’t stop wailing in any of them.

It strikes me as an extreme charge sheet for a bunch of harmless mid-life execs with good taste in Barolo and the confidence to decant it correctly. But they’re not above reproach entirely. As I look around – watching them share quail fritti, mussel pasta, lamb with polenta, beef with gorgonzola fonduta, Tema artichokes, skate wing, Iberiko tomato and other things best said in a non-specific continental accent – I do wonder what all the handwringing is for, where all that spiritual neediness came from. If I had to spend a few hours a week with my brow furrowed about Trossard-this or Gyökeres-that (blah blah blah), Trullo is exactly where I would want to do it.

The beloved “neighbourhood” restaurant has only been here in Highbury for 16 years, but it has firmly entered the match-day lexicon, for this tranche of fan at least. I have mozzarella with agretti and bottarga, followed by fettuccine and pork ragù; I drink a glass of Soave; and I find very little to dislike about the universe at all in that moment. I even warm to the ambient conversation about “a game that’s stuck in midfield” and how “Arteta might just get away with it”. Trullo – with its semi-open kitchen and candlesticks – has an easy charm to it, one that I might suggest the team’s manager lacks.

“Boring to watch” is the most common complaint from the neutral observer about Arsenal this season. The game is safe, it’s rehearsed, and those damn corners. But if you would permit me some primitive analogising, well – I can see how a cynic might be able to leverage a similar criticism of Trullo. The inclusion of something like a beef shin ragù could strike the less cerebral diner as uninspired, evidence of a restaurant playing it safe, leaning on the obvious, not aspiring for the spectacular. Mozzarella starter at an Italian restaurant? Groundbreaking.

But I have news for this imaginary complainant – this is precisely why Trullo works so well. Too many diners mistake innovation for quality (remember when everyone thought Heston Blumenthal was cool?), or confuse dazzle for brilliance. Easily done, in food as it is in football. This restaurant is cautious, precise and perfectly rehearsed. I challenge you to find someone who has ever had a bad time there, a single report of a mistake or a miss, a bowl of pasta that has ever not been exactly al dente. This, to me, is the making of a compelling restaurant. And you know what, Spurs? You’re welcome to rehearse those corners too!

I do not pity the maligned Arsenal fan. For most Man City supporters, a 95th-minute goal by Erling Haaland is the only proof that they can feel anything at all. But here in Highbury, I am in a room surrounded by a bunch of 40-whatevers unusually in touch with their inner Romantic, easily making up for all that wooden gameplay. Elsewhere among their array of casual privileges is to lose the league – “bottle it” – on a full stomach of clams and pici. Suffering is suffering, but I would rather suffer in mood lighting.