Aktar Islam to launch permanent Italian restaurant Legna in Birmingham

Aktar Islam is set to open his first permanent Italian restaurant, Legna in Birmingham at the end of the year.

Islam previously ran the pop up Mi Amore from the site earlier this year, and will now develop the central Birmingham location into a permanent 70-cover restaurant due to open in November.

Derived from the Italian word for firewood, Legna will serve a limited menu of eight starters and eight mains - including two home made pastas which will change seasonally. Bar food will also be served including classic salt cod fritters, cured meats and olives.

Last month Islam posted pictures of the restaurant's layout to Instagram, at the time telling The Caterer it was "the next in a line of several new boutique restaurants for Birmingham".

The chef made his name in 2009 while working at Lasan in Birmingham which was named ‘best local restaurant' by Gordon Ramsay on his F-Word TV show. He left Lasan in 2017 to open Opheem, an up-scale Indian restaurant situated close to Legna in Summer row, in May this year.

He said: "This is the culmination of a dream for me and I am so excited about welcoming guests to Legna. It truly will be like no other Italian restaurant in the city, both in its vision and its delivery. We'll stay true to traditional Italian cooking techniques; however, our dishes will have the flair and innovation that diners have experienced at Opheem."

"Our chefs will focus on a relatively small number of great dishes to ensure customers' expectations are always matched and hopefully exceeded. Gone are the days of over-long menus. Customers now want authenticity and quality, not overload.

"It was while working with Italian food that I learned about the beautiful simplicity of ingredients like ripe tomatoes, single estate olive oil, aged balsamic vinegar and the finest buffalo mozzarella. Great Italian food is all about letting the ingredients speak for themselves, and this will be the philosophy at Legna."

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