Dalla

You’ll find Dalla on a solitary corner near Hackney Central, in a little space that was once home to a couple of east London’s very first small plates and smelly wines restaurants. This place, though still achingly stylish, feels different. 

It’s an homage to traditional Italian cooking and mid-century design. The all-white dining room is filled with mahogany fittings and 1960s trinkets, and the changing menu can range from stodgy salentine fritters to luminous wild garlic risotto. Every region of Italian cuisine is up for grabs and the majority of it is pleasant, if not particularly memorable. Comforting cooking seems to be the order of the day at Dalla and its creamy tiramisu typifies that.

As well as canoodling dates taking smoking breaks in between their nettle ravioli, there’s the odd Italian expat in this chic room. Big reds are ordered, giardiniera is set down, impeccable sirloin comes, and then, for a minute or two, the little room feels like somewhere imagined in an Elena Ferrante novel. Then, you snap out of it. You’re still in E9. Dalla just feels like a restaurant that's always dreaming of somewhere else.

photo credit: Dalla

photo credit: Dalla

photo credit: Dalla