No. 01
The rooftop garden
Above the dining rooms, herbs and citrus grow in old terracotta pots beside the water tanks. Most mornings begin up there, cutting basil and lemon verbena while the city is still soft and grey.
Roma Norte, Mexico City
A townhouse where Italy falls for the Mexican season
Italian roots and Mexican seasons, met under glass and ferns in an old Roma Norte townhouse.
The house
We cook for the romance of an ordinary evening.
We cook for the romance of an ordinary evening. Old recipes are kept like letters, then opened to the market and the season until they soften into something that belongs to this house and this city.
Rosetta lives inside an old townhouse on a leafy street in Roma Norte, where ferns climb the staircase and jasmine leans through every open window. The rooms were once a family home, and they still feel that way, all worn marble, soft afternoon light, and the slow hum of a kitchen that has learned to wait. We cook the way the house asks us to. Italian recipes carried across an ocean, grown again in Mexican soil, set down gently on plates that have seen a hundred quiet dinners.
Three small rituals that keep the house in bloom.
No. 02
The conservatory table
Our favourite seats sit under glass at the back of the house, where the ferns are thickest and the light turns green by late afternoon. It is the closest thing we have to dining inside a garden.
No. 03
Bread, every morning
The oven is lit before anything else. We bake the day's loaves from a starter older than the restaurant, and the smell of it works its way up the staircase and into every room of the house.
Through the year
The same rooms, dressed by the season.
Spring, the windows open
First herbs from the roof
Jasmine returns to the back wall, and the rooftop gives its first basil and verbena. The kitchen lightens with it.
Summer, the conservatory
Green light at the back
The ferns grow thick under glass and the long lunches begin. We cook cool plates and pour the cloudy whites.
Autumn, the courtyard
Roses and slow braises
The courtyard roses fade and the oven runs longer. Rabbit, rosemary, and the last of the open red.
Winter, the warm rooms
Candles up the staircase
The house draws inward, candles climb the staircase, and we bake more bread than anyone could need.
The greenest table in the house sits under glass.
At the back of the townhouse the ferns close in and the light turns green by late afternoon. It is the closest thing we have to dining inside a garden, and the table everyone learns to ask for.
Glimpses of the rooms and the plates.
You do not so much dine here as visit a house that happens to cook beautifully, where the ferns and the candlelight do half the seducing.
Come for one plate, stay for the second glass.
We keep the candles lit and a few seats in the conservatory for those who write to us. The house is happiest when it is full.