There's a particular kind of restaurant that makes you forget where you are the moment you sit down. Tiella, Dara Klein's debut venture, is precisely that kind of place. Opened in January in a 175-year-old former pub on Columbia Road, it has the unhurried generosity of a proper trattoria—the sort of establishment where nothing much else matters beyond the front door.
Klein earned her stripes at some of London's most exacting kitchens: Brawn, Sager and Wilde. But it was her two-year residency at The Compton Arms in Islington that made her name. Working from a tiny kitchen, she fired out plate after plate of deceptively simple, deeply satisfying Italian food. The response was effusive enough that she's now opened her own place. Partnering with childhood friend Ry Jessup—co-founder of Homeslice—as co-owner and general manager, Klein has created something that feels neither precious nor nostalgic, but rather inevitable.
The cooking here reflects Klein's Pugliese heritage and childhood in Emilia-Romagna, executed with British produce alongside carefully chosen Italian imports. The Chicken Milanese arrives without pretension: breast flattened and fried, topped with green apple, celery, fennel and crème fraîche. The Passatelli in brodo—that delicate pasta made with Parmesan in meat broth—tastes like comfort distilled. A bowl of ricotta with Calabrian chilli and wild Sardinian honey demonstrates that Klein understands the power of restraint; the panna cotta arrives fragile, topped with Campari-infused rhubarb that cuts through the cream's sweetness.
What distinguishes Tiella is not innovation but conviction. Klein cooks the food she knows, without apology or elaboration. The Delica pumpkin with radicchio agrodolce and taleggio fonduta is the sort of dish that shouldn't work—it's deeply unfashionable—yet tastes like the only thing worth eating in winter. The warmth of the service, extended by Jessup and his team, feels genuinely hospitable rather than performed. This is what eating out should be: welcoming, confident, with the kind of subtle glamour that comes from knowing exactly what you're doing.