Trogolo – named after the stone troughs in the Tuscan farmyards that were once the loci of rural life – is a new trattoria determined to become a place where people can unite to eat pasta and drink Negronis to a soundtrack of Italo-disco music.
“It’s about connection, coming together and going back to the roots,” says Lara Boglione, the managing director of Petersham Nurseries (her parents are founders Francesco and Gael Boglione), who recently opened the trattoria with her husband Giovanni Mazzei, a Tuscan winemaker whose family has been making wine for 600 years.
The couple found the site for Trogolo on Westbourne Grove “completely by chance” and have turned it into a neighbourhood trattoria where you can have a quick chianti and crostini, or share a long, noisy dinner with friends. “We’ve always loved the atmosphere in the wine bars of Florence,” Boglione says. “They’re cosy, homely, full of life. We wanted to bring that to London.”
If Petersham Nurseries is the sophisticated elder sister, Trogolo is the looser, louder and probably hungover sibling. What they do share is “the same ethos and level of quality for the produce”, Boglione explains. “It’s definitely a family affair; Petersham Nurseries and Trogolo share the same DNA, but they’re very different.”
The space, which is spread across two floors, as well as a small courtyard, was designed entirely by the couple. “We didn’t use an interior designer; we did it all ourselves, inspired by our favourite places in Italy,” Boglione says. White marble butcher’s tables sit beside communal wooden benches, with hand-blown crystal glasses, brown butcher paper placemats and even a few lemon trees from the Petersham Nurseries’ greenhouse.
The food is rooted in Tuscan cooking and deliberately unfussy. The menu is split into sections: “dal bancone” (“from the bar”) and “dalla cucina” (“from the kitchen”). From the bar come crostoni topped with pecorino and pears, hand-cut cured Cinta Senese ham and crisp fritti of sage leaves and anchovies. Out of the kitchen, handmade tagliolini tossed with porcini or white truffle, and a slow-cooked ragù “done in a very old way, with a little bit of chocolate through it just as they do with wild boar back home”, explains Boglione, who lives in Tuscany. There’s also pollo al burro (chicken roasted in butter), arista con l’osso (bone-in pork loin with chilli) and soups finished with new-season olive oil.
“We’ve built the menu around very traditional ways of cooking – things that take time,” Boglione says. “Slow-roasted meats, proper ragùs, soups that have been simmering all day. Nothing’s reinventing the wheel; we just want to do things really nicely.” One of her favourites is a smooth, simple chickpea soup finished with the new season’s olive oil from their home in Tuscany. “Giovanni’s dad and our son were sitting around the table tasting it this week before sending it over,” she adds. The meat comes from her brother’s organic Haye Farm in Devon, while truffles and cheeses are sourced from Tuscany.
Wine is Mazzei’s realm. His family has been making it for 25 generations, and his 350-bottle list celebrates Tuscan wine in all its forms, including natural, small-producer bottles that sit alongside classics from his own family estate. “Through Petersham Cellar [a wine merchant founded by Mazzei and Boglione] we’ve brought quite a lot of wines ourselves from Italy, so there are some special bottles you won’t find anywhere else. We’ve also got a great cocktail list: homemade tomato juice for our Bloody Marys, and a Bullshot with an amazing meat broth made from all the bones we’ve got.”
Trogolo is made, as Boglione puts it, “for good food, good wine, good fun. We’ll always find you a table.”
Trogolo
296 Westbourne Grove, W11 2PS
02038366793
Hours:
Tue 5pm–10.30pm
Wed to Fri midday–11.30pm
Sat 11am–11.30pm
Sun 11am–10.30pm
