A delicatessen, a café and an Italian food shop, all in one small room off the plaza. Come for a coffee. Stay for lunch. Leave with something good in a bag.
Not quite a restaurant. Not quite a shop. Nonna Monda is the kind of Italian place where the cheese counter, the coffee machine and the wine shelf all belong to the same room — and where you are meant to linger.
Eggs and avocado on focaccia with the first espresso of the day. Focaccia romana built to order at lunch. Lasagne, cannelloni, parmigiana. Pizza and fresh pasta. Cannoli and gelato afterwards, because you are on holiday somewhere.
Pasta di Gragnano. Olive oils in painted ceramic. Balsamic condiments flavoured with lemon, rose and lavender. Hazelnut spreads, Sicilian coffee creams, Italian teas, flour milled for proper pizza — and a cheese and charcuterie counter to point at.
The terrace sits in the lane at Plaza Blanca, which means shade in the afternoon and lamplight by nine. On Fridays and Saturdays we stay open until eleven — a spritz, a tagliere, a bottle chosen off the shelf behind you.
Plaza Blanca is the small whitewashed square at the heart of Sotogrande — arches, balconies, a handful of shutters in that particular blue. Our sign hangs on a bracket in the lane, over the tables.
Inside it is one room: sage cabinetry, a marble counter, wisteria hanging from the ceiling and shelves running floor to roof. The deli counter is on your left as you come in, the shop is behind you while you eat, and the espresso machine never really stops.
Focaccia romana is the house sandwich — six of them on the board, from mortadella with stracciatella and pistachio pesto to burrata with grilled courgette. All of them are built fresh when you order and all of them can be changed, so say what you want.
Then there is the hot side: lasagne bolognese, aubergine parmigiana, cannelloni with ricotta and spinach, pizza from the oven, pasta from the counter. And a cheese and charcuterie tagliere for when you cannot choose.
Half the pleasure here is the browsing. Bronze-cut pasta from Gragnano. Olive oil in bottles you will keep long after the oil is gone. Balsamic condiments made with lemon, rose or lavender — the sort of thing you buy for someone and then keep.
There is no online shop, and we are not going to pretend otherwise. Come and pick things up, read the labels, ask what they are for. That is the point of a delicatessen.
“My nonna taught me how to find my own happiness.”
Andrea, on his grandmother
Monda was Andrea's grandmother. A mother, a homemaker, a cook — and a woman who put her makeup on, smoked, enjoyed a drink and danced. In a village of small minds, she was bigger than her surroundings.
Andrea came up through hospitality. Peter spent his career in financial markets. Between them they built Nonna Monda around Andrea's family, his grandmother's name and a shared conviction that Italian food is best handed over by someone who actually wants to talk about it.
You will usually find one of them in. That is rather the point.
The room can be laid out as a single long table — lemon-print cloth, candles, flowers, the blossom overhead and the shelves around you. Birthdays, anniversaries, a dinner for people who have been meaning to get together.
Tell us the date and how many of you there are, and we will take it from there.
On Friday and Saturday the lane stays warm until eleven. Small lamps go on the tables, the spritzes come out, and a tagliere and a bottle somehow becomes dinner.
The kitchen runs until 22:30 on those two nights — which is later than you would think for a delicatessen, and exactly as late as a summer evening needs.
No booking needed for coffee, lunch or a browse — walk in. For a table of six or more, or for the long table, give us a ring or drop us a line.
| Mon – Thu | 10:00 – 19:00 Kitchen closes 18:00 |
|---|---|
| Fri – Sat | 10:00 – 23:00 Kitchen closes 22:30 |
| Sunday | 10:00 – 16:00 Kitchen closes 15:30 |
