Tiella Trattoria & Bar

Dara Klein cooked Italian food out of a kitchen the size of a wardrobe at The Compton Arms for two years; the first thing Time Out's food editor said about her own room was that the Compton version "was good, but here it is exceptional" (Time Out).

Why go

Klein was born in Italy, grew up partly in New Zealand, and trained at Brawn, Sager + Wilde and Trullo before taking over the kitchen at an Islington pub in 2023 (Time Out, Harden's). She left at the end of 2024 with a plan. She opened here on 21 January 2026, after a soft weekend on the 16th, with Ry Jessup as co-owner and general manager, a childhood friend who co-founded Homeslice and The Plimsoll.

The building is a mid-Victorian pub, The Globe, run for the last twenty years as the Stingray Globe Cafe. Klein put it plainly: "There's history in these walls", and as custodians "we'll look after this old gal. There'll be pints pulled and you can prop up the bar, just this time you can have a bowl of rags." Fifteen seats at the bar, thirty in the dining room, an open kitchen between them, and twenty more on the terrace out front.

The cooking is regional Italian in the literal sense. Anchovies in saor is a Venetian marinade of wine, vinegar, pine nuts, parsley, red onion and sultanas. Passatelli in brodo is from Emilia-Romagna, egg and cheese pasta in a broth made from chicken wings and beef bones. Tiella itself is the round earthenware casserole of the Italian south. The wine list was built with her father Richard, who founded the Italian wine importer Artigiano Imports in New Zealand.

Order this / avoid

• Order: the chicken Milanese, which came over from the Compton Arms and got dill, fennel, celery, tarragon and green apple with it. The passatelli in brodo for the broth. Anchovies in saor. Delica pumpkin with radicchio in agrodolce over a taleggio fonduta. The panna cotta, which hides a bay leaf infusion under Campari rhubarb. At the bar, the blood orange margarita.
• Avoid: Monday and Tuesday, when it is closed. And do not give up on a full booking page, because Time Out's own tip is the useful one: "The bar area is always reserved for walk-ins. If you can't secure a booking, chance your arm on a drop-in perch, where the full food menu is available." (Time Out)

What locals & experts say

• Leonie Cooper, Time Out London's Food & Drink Editor, 2 February 2026, five out of five stars, on the dish nobody expects: "The most surprising dish of the evening is passatelli in brodo... A silent assassin, it looks like something you'd use to clean the oven, but tastes like a turbo mixed grill. The dark, glistening broth, made from chicken wings and beef bones, has been tended to and cared for as if it were an elderly and much-loved family pet." Her verdict: "Tiella is what eating out is all about: the warmest of welcomes, a subtle dose of glamour, incredible food, and the vague sense that nothing much else matters beyond the restaurant's front door. A triumph." ref
• Time Out London, 3 February 2026, putting it first on The 20 Best New Restaurants in London: "The Italian restaurant, which opened last month, has shot straight to the top of our ranking of the finest new places to eat in the capital. The list collates our critics' reviews to find the best new openings of the past 12 months, and this Bethnal Green trattoria blew us away." ref
• The Good Food Guide, which rates it Very Good on uniqueness, deliciousness, warmth and strength of recommendation, and lists it in Britain's 100 Best Local Restaurants 2026: "Cheery, unfazed Klein oversees the open kitchen, delivering punchy dishes full of confidence and strong culinary technique." ref
• Dara Klein herself, on why a trattoria belongs in a pub, as Cooper reports it: a true trattoria is the Italian equivalent of a British pub, a place the community comes together over food and drink. That is the reason the mahogany, the stained glass and the beer taps all survived the refit. ref

Good to know

• Where: 109 Columbia Road, Bethnal Green E2 7RL, the eastern end of the flower market street, four doors along from Brawn where Klein used to cook.
• Timing: Wednesday to Sunday. Closed Monday and Tuesday.
• Booking: book for the dining room. The fifteen bar seats are held for walk-ins and carry the full menu, which is the way in on a busy night.
• Price: Time Out bands it 3 of 4. No menu prices are published. Stuzzichini at the bar is the cheaper route.
• Drinks: Italian, French and Austrian wines on a list her father helped build, plus cocktails, spritzes and pints. The blood orange margarita is the one Time Out singles out.
• The room: a 15-seat bar, a 30-cover dining room, an open kitchen joining them, and a 20-seat terrace. Stained glass, mahogany panelling and a portrait of Cher above the bar.
• Hygiene: there is no Food Standards Agency registration for this premises, checked on 30 July 2026 by name nationally and by two address queries. Every other registered kitchen on Columbia Road appears; 109 does not. That is missing data rather than a finding.
• Diet: nothing published. The venue's site is a JavaScript shell with no readable menu, so ask.
• Who runs it: Dara Klein as chef-founder, with Ry Jessup, co-founder of Homeslice and The Plimsoll, as co-owner and general manager.
• Same place, two names: "Tiella by Dara Klein" and "Tiella Trattoria & Bar" are one restaurant at one address. Time Out and the Good Food Guide file it simply as Tiella.

Jeff's take (his words)

• Note: none. His saved-places export carries an empty note for this row, so the master CSV's "Dara Klein's trattoria in a restored Columbia Road pub" is enrichment text rather than his, and nothing here is attributed to him.

Verdict (Chef Jeff ladder)

must-visit — Build an evening around it, and if the booking page is full go anyway and sit at the bar. Dara Klein cooked Italian food out of a kitchen the size of a wardrobe at The Compton Arms in Islington for two years, having trained at Brawn, Sager + Wilde and Trullo, and the following she built there is why she got a room of her own. It is 109 Columbia Road, a mid-Victorian pub known as The Globe and then for two decades as the Stingray Globe Cafe, kept pubby on purpose: stained glass, mahogany panelling, a handpainted sign and a portrait of Cher over the bar. Fifteen bar seats, thirty in the dining room, an open kitchen joining them, twenty on the terrace. Time Out's London food editor Leonie Cooper gave it five out of five and the outlet then put it first on its twenty best new restaurants in London, and the Good Food Guide rates it Very Good on uniqueness, deliciousness, warmth and strength of recommendation while listing it among Britain's 100 Best Local Restaurants for 2026. The cooking is regional rather than generic Italian: anchovies in saor from Venice, passatelli in brodo from Emilia-Romagna in a broth of chicken wings and beef bones that Cooper called 'a silent assassin', delica pumpkin over taleggio fonduta, and the chicken Milanese she carried over from the residency because it was already right. Her father imports Italian wine in New Zealand and built the list. And the bar is held for walk-ins with the full menu on it, which is the whole argument for approachable over ceremony in one sentence. It rests on one scored review plus two guide placements rather than a wall of critics, and that is the honest limit on the confidence, not on the rung.