Three minutes after walking into Polentina in east London, I messaged the person who had tipped me off about it, asking: “Where the hell am I?” I had muttered several much saltier things while I was wandering around an industrial estate in Tower Hamlets, down dusty tracks and weaving my way through overflowing bins while looking for this restaurant, which isn’t quite a restaurant, but rather a canteen in a factory, where the food is, I’d been told, astonishingly good.
Polentina is the work of Sophia Massarella, a photographer and a forensically passionate fan of Italian food, although it is clearly the cooking side that has taken over of late. Massarella, a Canadian, started a business during lockdown to recreate the polenta, pasta and salad dishes so loved by the Italian side of her family. Her next, entirely illogical step was to take on this small space in the staff canteen of the sustainable fashion factory ApparelTasker, though, in a world where rent, rates and food and staffing costs thwart much creativity in cooking, nothing is remotely logical any more. Anyone with enough investment can serve gold-leafed slop in Mayfair, but it requires genuine guts and passion to take on a few tables in Bow that look out on a load of sewing machines.
On the day I went for lunch, one dish on the blackboard menu read: “Pomodori col riso, £13”. Massarella had stuffed big, fat Sorrento tomatoes – the type of lush, red fruit we Brits spot on our holidays, eat avidly and declare: “Now this is what a tomato should taste like.” Here, it had been hollowed out, stuffed brimful with herby, tomatoey carnaroli rice, then baked until the sweet flesh was yielding, yet somehow still supportive of its innards. I inhaled this tomato while pointing out to Charles the umpteen ways this “simple” dish would be ruined by a less able cook (ie, me). How was the rice al dente, even though it had soaked up so much flavour? How did the tomato’s skin support the weight of the stuffing, while being so pleasingly squishy? And was this side of fried potatoes for sharing, because, sadly, I had eaten them all? The other main course on offer that day was a bowl of excellent fresh spaghetti aglio, olio, peperoncino and bottarga – a tangle of pasta, garlic, fish roe and a hint of chilli finished with good olive oil for £15.
The food at Polentina is wonderful, but I cannot say that everything else about eating here isn’t rather peculiar, because it absolutely is. Lunch was served at 1pm on the dot, and the factory staff ate at the same time as the random diners, who just have to fit in around them and be respectful of the fact that this is their space. If you can’t do that, I suggest you stay away – and not just from Polentina, either, but from all hospitality venues. Have a ready-meal and keep your poor manners in the one room instead.
If you can share tables and be nice, however, Polentina is a place that plays on memories of Italian nonna food – stuffed things, layered things, offally things – mixed with a smattering of soups, dumplings and crepes in broth in a nod to the Austrian side of Massarella’s family. I loved a simple plate of fennel, pickled sharply, but with a good aniseedy kick, topped with some big, fat, soft, green pitted olives collapsing clumsily over the veg, and all scattered with a hint of pecorino. My favourite dish was a large pile of long-stewed, fat bobby beans draped over very good, fresh ricotta, served slightly warm, yet still singing of summer. There’s a range of excellent, if weird kombuchas, too (do try the Matka Ferments’ dehydrated strawberry and sweet cicely).
As I ate my pickled fennel, another diner – at a guess, a factory worker – opened a plastic box and began devouring a homemade egg-and-salad-cream Kingsmill sandwich and a Wagon Wheel. We are a broad church. Massarella was cooking and serving alone this lunchtime, but at weekend dinners she has recently been joined by Ollie Bass, formerly of Quo Vadis and Sessions Arts Club, because at night the place caters to a bigger crowd and offers a longer menu. Regardless of that, the open kitchen currently operates with only two induction stoves and a bain-marie in a space more suited to making egg and chips. Though, I dare say, in Polentina’s hands, that, too, would be worth travelling for. Desserts were plump homemade iced lemon cookies and little tubs of Puglian lemon ice-cream from La Grotta.
Polentina will get bigger, slicker and more famous, for sure, but, like the Sex Pistols’ first gig in the Common Room at St Martin’s College of Art, it’s good to experience a new thing when it’s weird and unsettling, and at the same time already altogether perfect.
Polentina 1 Bowood House, Empson Street, London E3, info@polentina.com. Open lunch Wed-Sat, noon-3pm; dinner Fri 6.30-11pm, Sat 6-11.30pm. From about £25 a head, plus drinks and service
Grace Dent’s new book, Comfort Eating: What We Eat When No One Is Looking, is published in October by Guardian Faber at £20. To pre-order a copy for £16, go to guardianbookshop.com.
