About Dona Theresa
We are a family-run Italian restaurant at 451 Uxbridge Road in Hatch End. We opened in 2011 and we still cook the way we did on the first night: proper Italian dishes, decent portions, and the sort of welcome you get in a Portuguese home.
Italian food, Portuguese welcome
Hatch End since 2011
How we dothings here
The name is Portuguese, the menu is Italian, and the customers are mostly from Hatch End, Pinner and Harrow. It is not a complicated formula. It just has to be done properly every night.
The kitchen
Ours is the kind of Italian menu that is getting harder to find. Minestrone and prawn cocktail to start, or Pera al Forno — a baked pear in red wine with deep-fried camembert, which sounds odd and which people drive over for. Then saltimbocca di vitello, calf's liver with sage, an 11oz Filleto Rossini, spaghetti alla pescatora piled with seafood, and a grilled Dover sole on the bone when we can get good ones.
Nothing is deconstructed. Sauces are finished in the pan to order. If you want your sea bass plain, your penne without the chilli or a half portion of pasta for a child, just say — the kitchen has been asked for stranger things.
The welcome
Dona Theresa is a Portuguese name and the hospitality is Portuguese too. In practice that means we would rather you stayed for a second coffee than felt hurried out, we remember what the regulars drink, and a birthday gets a proper fuss made of it whether you warned us or not.
A good number of the people eating here on a Saturday were eating here in 2011. Their children now book their own tables. That, more than any award, is the thing we are proudest of.
Wine
The list is mostly Italian with a few French bottles we like too much to drop. There is a Barolo and a Brunello for when it matters, a Primitivo and a Montepulciano for a Tuesday, a Sancerre for the fish, and a house Prosecco that does a lot of work at birthdays.See the wine list.
Worth knowingbefore you come
The questions we get asked most on the phone, answered once.
Opening hours
Lunch is 12 till 3, dinner 6 till 11, Tuesday to Sunday. We take Mondays off. On Sundays the dining room fills up with families from about half twelve, so if you want a quieter lunch, come after two.
The £19.95 menu
Two courses from a shorter version of our menu, at lunch and for early dinners. Orders need to be in by 6.45pm, and on Fridays and Saturdays we ask early-bird tables to finish by 8pm so the next booking can sit down. It isn't available for parties of more than twelve, and there's a 10% service charge.
Booking
Weekday lunches you can usually walk in. Friday and Saturday nights you can't, so book — online takes a minute, or ring 020 8421 5550 and whoever answers will sort it. Big tables and birthdays: give us a day or two's notice and tell us if there's a cake coming.
Vegetarian, allergies and fussy eaters
The menu marks vegetarian dishes with a (V) — parmigiana di melanzane, ravioli di funghi porcini, penne giardiniera and so on. Tell us about allergies when you book or when you sit down and the kitchen will tell you straight what is and isn't safe. Plain grilled fish or chicken for children is never a problem.
Getting here
We're on Uxbridge Road, about five minutes' walk from Hatch End station on the London Overground (the Euston to Watford Junction line). The H12 bus stops on Uxbridge Road. Pinner Metropolitan line station is a 20-minute walk, or a short cab ride.
Parking
There is free parking for guests at the restaurant, which is not something you get in Pinner village or on Hatch End Broadway. If it's full, the side roads are unrestricted in the evening.
451 Uxbridge Road,Hatch End
Hatch End sits between Pinner and Harrow Weald, and Uxbridge Road is its main street. We are on the stretch near the station — close enough to walk from the Overground, far enough from the Broadway that parking is not a fight.
Most of our guests come from Hatch End, Pinner, Harrow and Northwood, and a fair few from Watford and Ruislip, which is a longer drive than we would expect anyone to make for dinner. We are grateful that they do.
451 Uxbridge Road
Hatch End, Pinner HA5 4JR
Tuesday to Sunday
Lunch 12:00–15:00 · Dinner 18:00–23:00 · Closed Mondays
Hatch End station (Overground)
About five minutes on foot · H12 bus stops on Uxbridge Road
Your local Italian
On Uxbridge Road since 2011
Come and eatwith us
Book online for any evening, or ring us if it is for tonight and we will see what we can do.