Michelin-Starred Basque Restaurant Opens First London Site

Da Terra is now open at The Town Hall Hotel in Bethnal Green. Chef Paulo Airaudo’s “relaxed fine dining” restaurant, with food which takes inspiration from Latin America and Italy, opened today, Wednesday 23 January. Airaudo is also opening Da Terra Bar, alongside Rafael Cagali.

“We offer an international, informal but quality driven and modern approach towards cooking, beverages, decor and sound,” an announcement says: “we make sudamerican cuisine with Italian influence, remembering our roots.”

It replaces the Typing Room restaurant run by chef Lee Westcott, who has moved out of the city to open Pensons in Herefordshire later this month. It’s also the site where Nuno Mendes cemented his reputation as one of London’s most progressive chefs; the Portuguese’s restaurant Viajante was among the first to introduce the styles and techniques of Ferran Adria’s elBulli to the city. Mendes, together with Jason Atherton, was among a select group of chefs who had worked at was then the so-called best restaurant in the world.

Airaudo’s San Sebastián restaurant, Amelia, is located in the city’s Romantica district; Airaudo worked at Heston Blumenthal’s three Michelin-starred Fat Duck in Bray, before opening his debut restaurant La Bottega in Geneva. The 2015 opening received a Michelin star just four months after opening. Amelia won its first Michelin star in November 2017, the only San Sebastián restaurant opened that year to receive the accolade.

Amelia name-checks “using seasonal and sustainable raw materials and the revaluation of forgotten products” as the hallmark of its operation, with an exclusively organic and biodynamic wine list. This approach, the contemporary-industrial dining room, and an ambiguous “seasonal” menu with a choice of three drinks pairings, lean most closely towards the philosophy on show at Copenhagen restaurants Relae, Amass, and 108. In London, the closest comparable restaurants would be Lyle’s in Shoreditch and Portland in Fitzrovia.

The restaurant will initially open for dinner Wednesday to Saturday, from 6.30p.m. Lunch Thursday to Saturday, from midday.