When two cult favourite cuisines entangle in a culinary affair, it’s a question of magnet poles repelling or meeting. At Osteria Angelina, it’s two brushstrokes in different colours that make a beautiful picture.
Tucked away in a corner of Spitalfields lies Osteria Angelina, housed by an old Victorian warehouse but re-vamped with modern brick and glass that have recently come with this newly redeveloped pocket of town by Norton Folgate. It serves an unlikely pairing - Italian soul with Japanese restraint and is the second venture from the Dalston original, a room known for turning miso and pasta into something worth lingering over. Here, it feels calmer than Shoreditch but still plugged into the city’s energy. The timing makes sense: London’s diners are leaning into cross-cultural cooking, and this is fusion done without fuss. I visited back in June during a hectic opening fortnight.
A soft glow catches you at the door, where servers greet with the kind of energy that marks an opening month - eager, polished, intent on making it count. The room is generous in height, with light falling neatly on tables, but conversations dissolve into a steady hum. It’s modern and pseudo-Japandi: Akari lanterns float overhead, though unevenly spread across the space. Above, the exposed ceilings feel like a throwback to every 2010s Shoreditch dining room - an overdone trend that reminds me of every modern university arts building rather than adding any edge. Stylish, yes, but the dining chairs, a 2020s staple, lean more design fad than comfort. The best part is the open kitchen where you can see the detailed craftsmanship take place with silver steel kitchen worktops kissing the marble counters for bar-stool eaters.
Plates arrive to share, the kind of format that works best when you’re with people who understand the unspoken rule: order wide and taste everything! Hokkaido milk bread with kumquat and burnt honey butter sets a soft start - warm, tear-able, a little sweet. A “magic” tomato salad follows, but it never quite lifts. Tuna with house ponzu and wasabi is an easy, clean bite; the wasabi gives a sharp, welcome pop. Courgette flowers, heavy with miso ricotta, are the sort you’d fight over. But the pastas make the highlights to remember: truffle and kombu tortellini with a soft gentle buttery-ness that disappears on the tongue, and fazzoletti in duck ragu so deeply cooked it feels like winter inside a bowl. Dessert swings back to lightness - matcha caprese and miso caramel gelato, a finish that lingers without overstaying. If there’s a reason to come, it’s the pasta: slow, silken, and built for savouring.
The room draws an opening-month crowd - couples, small groups, all here to see what the fuss is about. Service swings between enthusiasm and over-animation, a little too insistent against the otherwise low-lit calm. It’s still finding its rhythm: a drink forgotten twice, pasta that arrived only after 45 minutes, and the quiet theatre of a chef realising my order had slipped entirely. None of it felt unkind, but the polish isn’t there yet. For now, it’s charm over precision.
Osteria Angelina delivers fusion with rare finesse - pastas so accomplished they could anchor the menu of any great Italian in the city, sharpened by Japanese precision. A few service creases remain, but the cooking is already operating at a level that marks it out as one of London’s most memorable new openings.
Osteria Angelina
1 Nicholls & Clarke Yard (off Blossom Street), London E1
020 4626 6930
Lunch: Tues–Sun, 12.15–2.30pm (noon–3pm Sat & Sun)
Dinner: 5.15–10.30pm (9.30pm Tues, Weds & Sun)
À la carte from around £50 per person, plus drinks and service.