Kensington’s Italian dining scene has a Tuscan contender in Bottega 35, where handmade pasta, wood-fired grills and generous pours of Italian wine are the order of the day. Opened in September 2025, the restaurant took over the former Zuaya site on Kensington High Street, giving the address a distinctly different identity after eight years of Latin American cooking.

It’s the work of twin brothers Alberto and Arian Zandi, founders of Emerald Hospitality Group, whose other London restaurants include Como Garden, Riviera and El Norte. At Bottega 35, the focus is on the hearty cooking of Tuscany, from slow-cooked pappardelle ragù and truffle mafaldine served in a pecorino wheel to grilled meats and tiramisu prepared tableside.

We visited the restaurant recently – here’s all the intel.

What’s the vibe like?

The interiors lean into a rustic Tuscan country-house aesthetic, with limewashed walls, exposed wooden beams, dark timber furniture, warm lighting and crisp white tablecloths. Spread across two floors, the restaurant has a more intimate dining room upstairs and a cosy, lounge-like feel downstairs, with natural light filtering into the ground-floor space.

In terms of atmosphere, think polished neighbourhood trattoria: smart enough for a date night or celebratory dinner, but relaxed enough for a long lunch on a random Tuesday. It has an understated, grown-up feel, with the warmth of a traditional Italian restaurant and a sprinkle of Kensington gloss.

And what’s on the menu?

Starters

You’ve got your honorary burrata and sourdough, alongside braised leeks, beef tartare, octopus carpaccio, and a few other options. More restaurants should look into adding octopus carpaccio to their menus – not only does it sound extra posh – it livens up the freshness of the fish, with lots of acidity and herbs for good measure.

The burrata pulled its weight – and sourdough bread is, naturally, mandatory to mop up all the remnants of this glorious gooey cheese. It didn’t have the springiness or crispness that a typical sourdough has, we will say that – but it hit the spot nevertheless.

Mains

With our bellies well lined for what’s to come, we turn to the menu again, and don’t even need to make it as far as the secondi. The primi had already given us plenty to get excited about.

The lemon ricotta ravioli, for example, is a masterful execution of contrasts: sharp, zingy lemon is the main note, countering the slightly sweet and dense ricotta that’s packed very generously into each parcel (you won’t need a magnifying glass to find it, for a change!).

Then comes the evening’s A-lister, but not before a full cheese-wheel Las Vegas show. Our waitress takes the gorgeous, lacy pasta for a spin inside a gigantic wheel of pecorino, twirling it until every strand is coated. Watching this throw-together pasta experience is somehow more gripping than waiting for London’s Christmas lights to light up for the first time.

The end result is totally worth the twists and twirls – a properly rich and pungent pasta that gets more addictive the more forkfuls you take. Sprinkle some liberal shavings of black truffle on top, and you get yourself a serious plate of pasta, theatrics or no theatrics. Please order it – it will make your experience.

Desserts

This tiramisu is a smokeshow. So much so that we completely forgot to do our job and take a decent photograph of the whole thing before diving in with a spoon (sorry). The coffee-drenched ladyfingers are adults-only material, with that punchy caffeine bitterness that defines the reigning traditional tiramisu. And the cream is pretty much perfection. Should we start a petition to make tableside tiramisu mandatory at every Italian restaurant in London?

Somehow, despite having stuffed our faces at Italian restaurants all over London, we’d never come across a torta Susanna before. A speciality from Parma, this one pairs a ricotta filling with a thick layer of dark chocolate ganache. This is not a dainty little pudding you can delicately polish off – it’s so rich, thick, and indulgent, it will blow your socks off. Unexpectedly, ricotta and chocolate are a power couple.

Verdict

As far as cosy and understated Italian restaurants go, Bottega 35 is a delight. A bit of tableside theatre doesn’t always translate into food worth writing home about, but here the kitchen clearly knows flavour (and cheese flavour, specifically). Everything we had was a solid 8 if not 9/10, and that’s saying something given our admittedly stratospheric standards for Italian trattorias in London.

The truffle pasta is an absolute must-order (just bite the bullet and pay the price), as is the tiramisu. And judging by the hits we had, we’d be pretty confident ordering our way through the rest of the menu, too. We’d save Bottega 35 for a date night to get the best experience. It’s almost too cosy and charming to waste on a work dinner with colleagues you just about tolerate.

Key details

Address: 35 Kensington High St, London W8 5EB

Website: bottega35.com

Socials: @bottega.35

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