Regional Italian cuisine is at the heart of Ida’s menu. Our philosophy is to offer the kind of simple, hearty dishes you are likely to eat at the house of a favourite Italian aunt, rather than the more elaborate food found in restaurants both here and in Italy. Using the freshest possible ingredients, Ida’s  menu meanders month by month through the Italian regions, each influenced by its own unique history and culture. Thus, one month we are in Piemonte, with its disctinctly French influences, and the next in Sicily with its Arab flavours and dishes. And of course the beauty of Italian cuisine is the richness of its heritage; no matter how many times we return to a region, there will always be new dishes to put on our menu.

Our philosophy at Ida is that hand made is better; thus, the tiramisu has home made pan di spagna at its base rather than sponge fingers, we preserve and fillet our own mackarel, and our chef likes nothing better than baking his own individual pies and tarts.

But Ida’s greatest strength we believe is the hand rolled pasta. Rarely outside the Italain family home - and a traditional one at that - do you find pasta entirely made by hand. Every day at Ida, we prepare trays of fresh, tagliatelle, gnocchi and strichetti, which are air-dried, then cut by hand and served with our own slow-cooked sauces.