This artful – and art-filled – Italian restaurant with a jazz hall and gallery on site is one of Notting Hill’s best-kept secrets
The coral-like chandelier and art collection at Pollini
I can’t say I’m surprised when I walk into Pollini and am greeted by a man wearing black feathery wings. We have, after all, just arrived at the swish entrance to Ladbroke Hall, complete with sculptures, statues and candle-lined stairs.
‘Are you here for Victoria’s birthday party?’ he smiles, assuming my friend and I are part of the glamorous girl gang flocking into a private room in the back.
‘Just for dinner,’ we reply, and he steps aside and bows us into a magnificent dining room that looks, and feels, like a theatre. Perhaps I should have worn my best feathers, too.
This is Pollini – an ultra-glam Italian restaurant, art gallery and jazz venue housed in Ladbroke Hall, just north of Notting Hill. Being local, I pride myself on knowing Notting Hill’s restaurant scene inside out, but Pollini has – somehow – never quite made it on to my radar. And now I’m here to tell you exactly why it should be on yours.
The background
Pollini opened at Ladbroke Hall in 2023, but the building started life in 1903 as a car factory and showroom. In 2019, Carpenters Workshop Gallery founders Loïc Le Gaillard and Julien Lombrail began converting it into an arts and culture hub, later bringing in architect Vincenzo de Cotiis to design the interiors, and chef Emanuele Pollini to helm the restaurant. Pollini himself was named Best Italian Chef in 2020 by Italian food and wine magazine Gambero Rosso and has racked up experience in many Michelin-starred kitchens before landing up in Ladbroke Grove.
Photography: Melisa Coppola
Fresh pastas feature on the menu – including tortelloni
The background
Beaux-Arts architecture aside, the beauty of this building is its breadth. On arriving, you clip-clop up candlelit steps and enter a columned, arched space, lit by a huge, bulbous chandelier that looks like a massive piece of coral. Oversized palm-like plants sweep up to meet it, giving the impression that you’ve been shrunk, Alice-style, into an architectural wonderland. The centrepiece is a jagged black bar, stacked with bottles – largely from Italy – that might as well be labelled “drink me”.
The white walls are reminiscent of an art gallery; no doubt because of the collection displayed around the room (there’s a map of the artworks on the back of your menu). On your right, a corridor slopes off into Carpenters Workshop Gallery, which you can stroll around pre- or post-dinner. On your left, there’s a jazz hall with live performances every Friday – ask if there are still seats after dinner to chase your meal with some music.
There’s also a pair of private rooms – including a very chic basement bar – and a bamboo-filled garden designed by Chelsea Flower Show winner Luciano Giubbilei. This is the place to be in summer, with everyone gathering their Chanel handbags and opting for dinner alfresco.
The food
It makes sense that a photogenic place like this would have pretty plates. And Pollini certainly provides them. We start with a pizzetta piled with Umbrian truffle, lemon-drenched sea bass carpaccio and a mound of fritto misto – the latter two from the British coast. Everything is presented with painterly precision; a delicate splatter of lemony oil over the carpaccio, capers placed like pearls atop the aioli. It tastes artful, too – the flavours are delicate and balanced, the textures spot on.
This is an Italian restaurant, so of course we have pasta – tortelloni stuffed with porcini mushrooms and buffalo mozzarella, and twisted so they look like boiled sweets. The mushroom sauce is such a hit of umami that it’s a struggle not to lick the (pristine) porcelain plates, but we satiate ourselves with tiramisu – a cloud of cream and cake in a retro silver goblet, reinforced with a crunchy biscuit baseline.
Pollini's dining room is at its most atmospheric at night
The bill
Special occasion-worthy: about £250 for two, including a bottle of wine.
The verdict
I make a point of never using the phrase “hidden gem”, but I’ve caught myself describing Pollini that way since my visit. It feels like a place for properly in-the-know people; a cast of glamorous, Burberry-trenched other diners only adding to the glitz of it all. The food is fantastic, the setting even more so. Book it for a date, book it for a jazz night with friends, book it for a glass of wine in the garden. Just make sure you book it – before everyone else catches on.
79 Barlby Road, W10 6AZ; ladbrokehall.com
