Summer in Bury St Edmunds has little in common with San Sebastián, even if both certainly entice food-lovers. A few months ago, however, Suffolk’s food capital welcomed a soupçon of fancy-pants Spain in the form of Bellota on Churchgate Street, not far from the abbey. Bellota bills itself as offering an “elevated tasting menu” (seven courses, and eight at weekends) and boasts only a maximum of 20 seats, all of them lined up around a counter overlooking married chefs Ruben Aquilar Bel and Gabriella Fogarasi at work.
On its website, Bellota promises to be “relaxed and welcoming”, which before going I severely doubted, because tasting menus rarely are: “I found the chef’s 657-word soliloquy on artichoåkes very relaxing,” said no one ever. However, on entering the restaurant on a recent Saturday and finding a room hewn in a rhapsody of calm browns and golds, and Fogarasi herself greeting us at the door, well, Bellota actually felt rather zen. There is a cosiness here that doesn’t at all feel like your average flash-harry fine-dining metropolitan joint. On a sold-out night of two sittings, there were a mere four staff working all evening. There were no hostesses leading us 40 steps to our seats, no pushy sommeliers, no kitchens stuffed with staff ostentatiously shouting, “Oui, chef!”
