It’s safe to say that Clapham’s food scene would be a lot less interesting if it wasn’t for Robin Gill. After opening his first restaurant The Dairy to critical acclaim, he opened The Manor around the corner and Counter Culture next door. All championed a modern British style of cooking with a focus on ferments, preserving and curing, and quickly became some of the most popular restaurants in London.
So when Robin announced The Manor would be closing at the end of 2017 to become Sorella, an Italian restaurant inspired by the cuisine of Campania and the Amalfi Coast, there were questions. Why, when The Manor was doing so well? What would Robin’s very talented head chef Dean Parker have to say about it? And how would their distinctive style of cooking translate to a completely different type of cuisine?
If you’ve been reading the reviews of Sorella since it opened in January 2018, you’ll know that there was no need to worry. It’s been raved about – perhaps even more than The Manor in its heyday – and has provided Clapham with a fantastic Italian restaurant (which it was sorely lacking). Dean is manning the pass and creating fantastic plates of food night after night, and there’s still that love for preserving at its core. And the reason for the change? It all goes back to Robin’s time at Don Alfonso 1890, a two-Michelin-starred restaurant on the Amalfi Coast that he worked at back in 2002.