Bellota sits on Churchgate Street in Bury St Edmunds near the abbey and channels Spanish influences in a compact, counter-seated setting. The restaurant offers an elevated tasting menu of seven courses (eight at weekends) with a maximum of 20 seats arrayed around chefs Ruben Aquilar Bel and Gabriella Fogarasi. The dining room features calm browns and golds and projects a cosy, zen atmosphere. Service is delivered by a small, efficient team without ostentatious front-of-house theatre. Warm sourdough in hessian bags and salted butter are served, and thoughtful wine pairings accompany dishes such as hake with salsa verde and escalivada raviolo. The kitchen feels homespun yet thoroughly professional.
On its website, Bellota promises to be relaxed and welcoming, which before going I severely doubted, because tasting menus rarely are: I found the chef's 657-word soliloquy on artichoakes very relaxing, said no one ever. However, on entering the restaurant on a recent Saturday and finding a room hewn in a rhapsody of calm browns and golds, and Fogarasi herself greeting us at the door, well, Bellota actually felt rather zen.
Bellota is homespun, sure, but it's not remotely amateur-hour, and the meal service is gloriously well honed. Within mere moments of us taking our seats, warm loaves of Fogarasi's sourdough bread appeared in cute hessian bags and with a glut of salted butter; we were offered more bread throughout the meal, just in case the tasting-menu portion sizes weren't already sating enough.
Summer in Bury St Edmunds has little in common with San Sebastian, even if both certainly entice food-lovers. A few months ago, however, Suffolk's food capital welcomed a soupcon of fancy-pants Spain in the form of Bellota on Churchgate Street, not far from the abbey. Bellota bills itself as offering an elevated tasting menu (seven courses, and eight at weekends) and boasts only a maximum of 20 seats, all of them lined up around a counter overlooking married chefs Ruben Aquilar Bel and Gabriella Fogarasi
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