The food of one region
Brasato al vino, fresh egg pastas, arancini, pinsa-style pizza — the northern, Alpine end of Italy, not the tourist-menu clichés. Even the beer is Baladin, brewed back in Cuneo.
Cuneo Park Square
He missed the food of Cuneo, so he built the tavern here.
LA PIOLA CUNEO → LEEDS · EST. 2022
A word from the Piedmontese dialect.
In the hills around Cuneo, a piola isn’t a restaurant you dress up for. It’s the little family-run tavern where the village eats together — honest cooking, local wine, the cook out front. That is the room Fabio Rua wanted to make in Leeds.
Fabio had cooked in Italian kitchens for the better part of twenty years, and lived in Leeds for fifteen, before a £20,000 start-up loan in the spring of 2022 let him take a lease of his own. He opened that September as a small coffee-shop and deli with an Italian accent, then grew it — table by table — into the underground restaurant it is now.
What makes it different
Not generic Italian. Specifically Piedmontese.
Yorkshire on the plate too
Fabio pairs Piedmontese recipes with local Yorkshire suppliers, and likes the overlap: both places love a rich, slow-braised piece of beef.
Made here, served by him
Dishes are prepared fresh on site, and Fabio is usually the one at your table. That’s the whole point of a piola — the cook knows the room.