A warm ‘Benvenuto’ to the new La Balena

The family's former restaurant in Glasgow, La Parmigiana, was highly prized.

Stornoway is standing by for a major culinary event – the opening of a new Italian restaurant called La Balena which will occupy the premises on Francis Street previously well-known as The Whaler’s Rest.

La Balena is Italian for ‘the whale” and Matteo Giovanazzi, who is behind the project, says: “We know everyone’s going to call it ‘the Whaler’s’ anyway, so it was the obvious name”.

Matteo comes with impeccable credentials – his wife, Laura, is from Lewis while his own family background goes back for 200 years in the restaurant business, most of the last century in Scotland.

The restaurant is at present being fitted out by local contractor Neil Mackay, who also owns the building. It will accommodate around 50 diners with an extensive south-facing courtyard to the rear, which will take another 30 when weather permits.

An award-winning chef, Matteo says that the restaurant will offer familiar Italian fare of pizza and pasta but he also intends to place heavy emphasis on island seafood and the produce of local butchers. He intends to recruit and train local staff.

Matteo, who was until recently head chef in his uncle’s Café Parma in the west end of Glasgow, says the decision to take the Stornoway plunge was made while Laura was expecting their daughter Sofia, who is now one year old.

“We decided this is a better place to raise a wee one”, said Matteo.

“Laura’s family is here and my family had returned to Italy. I had been working crazy hours during Covid and needed a change. It all pointed to Stornoway”.

His family is best known for its 50 year ownership of La Parmigiana in Glasgow’s Great Western Road, one of the city’s earliest and best-loved Italian restaurants which was sold by his father in 2018. They also owned the Philadelphia fish and chip shops.

His family comes from the small town of Borgator, near Parma, on his father’s side and the well-known source of Scottish migrants, Barga, on his mother’s. Matteo’s great-grandfather came to Scotland in 1913 and opened the first chip shop at St George’s Cross in 1936.

Matteo trained in La Parmigiana and also graduated in hospitality management at Strathclyde University. He was short-listed in 2021 as Italian chef of the year in the Scottish Italian Awards.

La Balena will bring back to life a place that has a long-standing place in the history of Stornoway hospitality.

Before becoming the Whaler’s Rest in 1996, when bought by Jock Murray, it was a long-established centre of sociability and entertainment as the Carlton Inn.

More recently, it was run as a bar and lounge by businessman Moray Weir – who now owns and runs the successful Blackhouse Bakery – before closing its doors as an operating licensed premises before lockdown.

While there is no firm date for the opening of the new restaurant, the hope is it will catch the busy summer trade.