Laura Horta from Osteria Angelina 

0:13Hello and welcome to the Monaco Weekly. I'm Fernando Augusto Pacheco and for today's episode I speak to the co-founder of Osteria Angelina, Laura Horta. Osteria Angelina is her second restaurant after Angelina in Dalston. The new space in London's Spearfields is a celebration of Itameshi, Italian food with Japanese ingredients and influences. Here is my conversation with her.

0:46Laura Horta, one of the co-founders of Osteria Angelina and Angelina at Austin as well. What a pleasure. Pleasure is mine. And first of all, Laura, tell me where are you from? I sense a Brazilian accent. Yes, I'm from Sao Paulo, Brazil. And I've been in London since 2011, so almost 14 years now. I loved Osseria Angelina. Before we talk about the restaurant, which is this amazing Italian-Japanese type of food, what's your relationship with food? Did you come from a very foodie family? Yes, my fourth family is involved in food in Sao Paulo. So my parents have always been involved in Spot and Ritz.

1:26Big fan of Spot. Yeah, well, I love Spot. So every time I go back, I go to Spot, I go to Ritz. And, you know, just I've been around restaurants all my life. My grandma also, you know, wrote about food for years and she had a catering business as well. So I've always been around food and I've always loved food very much. And when you moved to London, did you feel that you wanted to do something related to it? Like open a restaurant? Yes, yes. Well, I ran away from it a little bit in Brazil because I wasn't sure. Like I've always loved it and I wanted to be in hospitality. Before a bit, like right after I finished uni, there was like an option of, you know, starting working with my grandma and staying there.

2:04I was like, oh, yes, I want to, but I feel that if I do this now, I won't get to experience other things. So I moved to London, being like, oh, yeah, I'll be there for one to two years. You know, I work in restaurants and travel around, you know, Europe. And I did that, but I ended up staying and staying and staying. And here you are. And of course, everything starts with Evangelina Dalston, right? And now there's a sequel to it, but they're different. They're different. Yes, they're different. Concepts, right? Yeah, one, you know, we've got a tasting menu in Dalston. do like a Kaiseki inspired you know you've got a bit of you know Japan and Italy in a lovely mix and it's the same in Australia but it's just a bit easier, it's a bit more you know we've got kids we've got families it's a bit more open because it's a la carte it's very spacious, the space itself it's beautiful, for some reason I think London needed such a space like that yes it's great, when we came to see the space we fell in love with it it used to be a warehouse and we just got inside it's like it feels you know so spacious and we could put an open kitchen in in it and still have you know outside area and it just felt perfect like it's right in the center of it all but it feels so private at the same time and i want to ask why italian japanese you are from sao paulo right which is a city with huge communities of italian and also japanese is that perhaps something from when you were growing up and those It's something that Josh came up with.

3:34So when I came into the project, it was already like this, but I just felt it fit so beautifully with me because precisely from being from Sao Paulo and having those two so close to heart, it just made sense. For Josh, he's always been in love with all things Japan and he lived in Italy and spoke Italian and just felt like it was needed. And Itameshi is such a huge thing and he needed to bring it to people of London. I discovered a name looking at your website. I have to say Tamash. I think it looks pretty cool. What's your favorite dish? I know that's a bit of a difficult question. At the moment, my favorite dish is our tomato pasta, which it feels like it's such a simple thing.

4:16A lot of people are like, oh, tomato pasta. You know, it's too simple. I won't have it. But with yuzu kosher, it just lifts it to the best tomato pasta you've ever had. And I also love, we do a linguine with mentaiko, which is lovely. It's not on the menu right now, but it needs to come back. I have to say the tuna crudo with that wasabi on top, that's so special. But that's a very different type of wasabi from the ones I'm eating. Is there anything different? Yeah, it's kisami wasabi. It's extra fresh and it just retains the flavor so much more. For example, when you open Osteria Angelina, do you have to change the menu?

4:52Do you wait a few weeks and see what's working, what's not? So how does that work in terms of having to change the menu? Or maybe not. maybe it wasn't necessary. We change frequently. Sometimes it's something that is not in season anymore, so we have to change to something that is. There's also sometimes something takes a little bit too long and we can't keep it in the same way. We're always trying to make sure that the guest experience is always the best as it can possibly be. So we'll have to change here and there to allow for that. I think we must talk as well about that dessert. that's the only place I've eaten a panna cotta with caviar.

5:30That was the other one. That's an interesting mix. Yeah, so basically I think it's, you know, the creaminess just allows for, you know, the saltiness of the caviar to just elevate it so much. So I think it's just perfect. You know, it's creamy, salty, sweet. It's a bit of everything you want. From the experience of a restaurateur now that you are, is London a tough city to be a restaurateur? How do you feel? Or maybe it's the opposite, because I've been here three times and it was crowded all the times that came. Oh, yeah. We've been so lucky, so fine. Fingers crossed it remains that way. Yeah, I feel like London is quite difficult.

6:09I think they make it tough, like licensing. There's just, you know, so many red tape things around, you know, what time you can stay open, when you can sell alcohol. You need to, you know, jump through many hoops. I also think taxation is quite high. in Sao Paulo I think VAT for restaurants is around 4 % if I'm correct and here is 20 % I think margins wise it makes things a bit trickier so sometimes people from Sao Paulo they come here and they get surprised by the fact that they have to make reservations and there are other cities after two hours you need to vacate your table and I hate doing that because the police say in me I really hate kicking people out of their tables.

6:54But just the realities in London is that you can't have a business if you can't do more than one sitting, you know? Talking about Paulistas, did your family, have your family eaten in your restaurant? Yes, they've been, they came like they weren't. They were meant to come, you know, a few months after we opened, but we got delayed a few months so then they ended up coming in the opening week. So I feel like I barely had time to see them, but it was great. They came over and they had lunch and then another time they had dinner. It it was great. I know it's too early to say, but I was just wondering, because I feel, do you have already plans of expansion or what's set in your mind?

7:30You know, first, let's establish Austria Angelina and then we see how it goes, right? Yeah, well, I'm always a bit more cautious. I go like, okay, let's get established. Let's make sure everything is, you know, running well and then we can look. But, you know, my partner, Josh, he's always looking, you know thinking five steps ahead so i'm sure he's got already plans that i don't even want to know about because i'll get too stressed what do you cook at home i wish i had more time to cook at home we don't cook that much at home at the moment because we're in the restaurant so much you can take some of the lovely focaccia i just ate yes it is a special focaccia it is a special and we eat a lot of it.

8:13All of the little extra bits go to us in San, which I'm not complaining. But at home, when we cook, you know, we do my cook pastas, risottos. I love a roast chicken, and Josh loves a roast chicken as well. So yes, that, I guess. And my final question is, just because you're Brazilian, I know your restaurant is Italian and Japanese, but do you feel like Brazilian chefs or Brazilian restaurateurs? I have a feeling it's our moment. It took a while, but we are there in the international scene. I feel very proud of having a Brazilian restauranteur here in London. Yes, I think so. I think it took a while.

8:50It took a while to properly start. I think it was hard to get, and it still is hard to get, ingredients in Brazil. But I think now, finally, after many years of slowly brewing, I think people are giving the proper recognition to the ingredients that come from Brazil. So instead of having to get, you know, cheese from Italy, you know, we're like, actually, we have nice cheese. We can invest in our own cheese in our own regions and make it a thing. And I think that's finally catching on, which is amazing to see.

9:30That was Laura Horta. And for more information, go to Angelina.London. I'm Fernando Gusto Pacheco. The show was edited by Jack Jewers. Thank you for listening.