UPDATE December 2023: Volta do Mar has now moved from its previous Covent Garden location to Chelsea. We’ll be back with the full scoop once we’ve been, but you can make a booking here.
We’ve found your list of favourite 15th century sailing manoeuvres.
And you’ll be delighted that your all-time no. 1 – the volta do mar – has now become immortalised as a restaurant in Covent Garden.
It comes to you from Salt Yard co-founder Simon Mullins and his wife Isabel Almeida da Silva. They’ve lavished a double-fronted Georgian townhouse with serious love and care, transforming it into an “eccentric merchant’s house” with soothing olive walls and grand original features like marble fireplaces and carved pilasters. And on your way to the first floor dining room, you’ll be tempted by the bar area on the ground floor, which serves up rare spirits from around the world and an impressive list of Portuguese wines available by the glass.
Just like the volta – which, as you well know, involved sailing perpendicularly away from home ports to pick up useable winds, and enabled Portuguese sailors to voyage across the oceans – the menu here is built of classic Portuguese dishes and recipes infused with influences from its trading posts around the world. That means you’ll find Brazilian smoked ham and Iberican pork vindalho from Goa sitting side by side with freshly baked pastel de nata from the in-house bakery. The quality of the dishes is high – unsurprising, seeing as it’s all cooked up by chef George Tannock, who’s previously manned the pans at The Fat Duck, Sexy Fish…
… and Exuberant Snail.
Volta do Mar | 13-15 Tavistock Street, London WC2E 7PS
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