There’s no denying it: traipsing through metropolitan east London, around an industrial estate bordering Limehouse Cut, is not a priority for most. But somewhere in the middle of the warehouses and factories, the concrete and the old cars, is a small Italian canteen called Polentina. It serves some of the finest regional Italian food in London.
The place was founded in 2020 by the photographer Sophia Massarella, Canadian-born but with Italian and Austrian heritage. The restaurant is a classic tale of lockdown-induced cooking and the culmination of passion and circumstance. The space is a canteen in the corner of a factory floor, somewhere the workforce at Apparel Tasker, a sustainable clothing manufacturer, use for break times. Massarella took it on and started cooking. Years later and it is becoming a destination.
