Given the success of its in-house restaurant, the Game Bird, it's hardly a surprise that London hotel, The Stafford, has splashed out on another venture with its culinary director, Ben Tish.
This time setting up within a three-storey Georgian townhouse in Fitzrovia, Norma is a Sicilian restaurant, threaded with the Moorish influences of the island's cuisine.
Inside, local firm Rosendale Design has created a thoughtful mood-board of textures and references, while avoiding obvious tropes.
The Moorish and Sicilian elements are present, but in discreet touches of encaustic tiles - inlaid with Islamic geometric patterns - mosaics, antiqued mirrors, and Verde Alpi Marble from Italy. These are more quietly offset by a more global palette that includes dining chairs and tables from Inside Out Furniture and bespoke lighting by Atelier Schroeter and Nocturne Workshop.
All this comes together to form a suitably warm and welcoming backdrop for Tish's menu which showcases seasonal Italian produce that underscores his success with the Game Bird. Standouts include the crudo bar, which takes centre-stage on the ground floor; Sicilian red prawns dressed with rosemary and orange; the grilled pork chop topped with spiced quince and served with potatoes and black cabbage; or the array of house-made pasta, including the taglioni with sardines, fennel, raisins and pine nuts.
INFORMATION
ADDRESS
8 Charlotte St
-
NYC’s first alcohol-free members’ club is full of spiritThe Maze NYC is a design-led social hub in Flatiron, redefining how the city gathers with an alcohol-free, community-driven ethos
-
Inside Helmut Lang’s fashion archive in Vienna, which still defines how we dress todayNew exhibition ‘Séance de Travail 1986-2005’ at MAK in Vienna puts Helmut Lang’s extraordinary fashion archive on view for the first time, capturing the Austrian designer-turned-artist’s enduring legacy
-
Eclectic and colourful, Charlie Ferrer’s home reflects the interior designer’s personal and professional evolutionThe New York interior designer invites us into his new Greenwich Village home: come on in
-
Sir Devonshire Square is a new kind of hotel for the City of LondonA Dutch hospitality group makes its London debut with a design-forward hotel offering a lighter, more playful take on the City’s usual formality
-
This sculptural London seafood restaurant was shaped by ‘the emotions of the sea’In Hanover Square, Mazarine pairs a bold, pearlescent interior with modern coastal cuisine led by ‘bistronomy’ pioneer chef Thierry Laborde
-
Montcalm Mayfair opens a new chapter for a once-overlooked London hotelA thoughtful reinvention brings craftsmanship, character and an unexpected sense of warmth to a London hotel that was never previously on the radar
-
Follow the white rabbit to London’s first Korean matcha houseTokkia, which translates to ‘Hey bunny’ in Korean, was designed by Stephenson-Edwards studio to feel like a modern burrow. Take a look inside
-
Poon’s returns in majestic form at Somerset HouseHome-style Chinese cooking refined through generations of the Poon family craft
-
One of London’s favourite coffee shops just opened in Harvey NicholsKuro Coffee’s latest outpost brings its Japanese-inspired design to the London department store
-
Enjoy a Kyoto-inspired menu with London attitude at this new restaurantAki London offers a serene counterpoint to Oxford Circus, where stately interiors and elevated Japanese cooking cross paths
-
At this charming bolthole in The Cotswolds, doing nothing is an art formLeave your mobile on ‘do not disturb’, switch off and slow down at this 16th-century manor-turned-hotel
