The Big Interview: La Follia

I first heard about La Follia, the Italian-inspired café, from friends in nearby Petersfield in the autumn of 2023. We were comparing notes on local hostelries we liked as well as others we did not. The couple became distinctly shifty when talk turned to their top pick. They looked at each other as if for permission to mention it. Luckily, they spat it out, but not before extracting a solemn pledge that I must not disclose the information to anyone else, in case it prevented them from getting a table at the recently-opened café. 

I am now happy to divulge that secret, since food writer Tom Parker-Bowles (the Queen’s son) has already let the cat out of the bag. After visiting the café last year, he promptly placed it on his list of Britain’s 16 hidden gems of hospitality excellence, describing it in the Daily Mail as “a small but perfectly formed Italian café in a pretty West Sussex village.”

La Follia

The café is now less of a secret, and deservedly so. In an era of ever-increasing homogeneity in coffee and sandwich shops, whether chains or independents, there is an insidious creep towards the global café with its dreary sameness in décor, food and even clientele and of which Mariana Newton’s café is the antithesis. 

Instead, there is only Stanley Tucci-inspired excellence: “cicchetti”, the small plates of delicious Italian delicacies perfect for premises with small kitchens, combining high-end Italian imports with local artisan supplies.

There are ubiquitous Italian favourites, such as such as caprese salad, but its standout quality makes it seem innovative. I recommend the crostini, with prosciutto, whipped ricotta and hot honey as well as an array of imaginative drinks, coffees and teas. An example is the imaginative orange juice espresso from the ‘Weird but Wonderful’ section of the menu, which comprises of orange juice with a double shot of espresso in a glass.

Add to that the eclectic vintage and antique furniture and chairs on which you sit, part of Mariana’s adjoining Lamb & Newt antique business, and which might be sold by your next visit only to be replaced by something equally original, and you get some measure of the charm of the business. That’s not to forget the warm and inviting welcome always on hand by Mariana and her team, all of which combines to make La Follia so special. 

A love for vintage and more

A Londoner, whose family originally owned Asprey, the London-based emporium of fine jewellery and other luxury items, Mariana had little in the way of any previous hospitality experience. Her background as a senior art director for glossy magazines and later as a creative director, working with top photographers and filmmakers for big lifestyle fashion brands, such as Boden, Beaufort & Blake and Fat Face, however, gave her the ability to style a truly original, if not wonderfully eccentric evolving interior backdrop to her café.

“We were working on some amazing shoots all over the world, but kept seeing the same props everywhere we went, so I started buying up various vintage props, which reignited my love for interiors,” she says.

That new obsession eventually evolved into a separate business, which Mariana operated alongside her creative production company, located on a farm just outside of South Harting, where she moved to from London with her husband and three young children in 1998 to ameliorate her daughter’s asthma.

However, the untimely death of her producer business partner in 2015 prompted a reappraisal of priorities and lifestyle, constantly travelling internationally with large production teams as she ran her businesses from the South Downs. 

It was organising her daughter’s 21st birthday with close friend Kate Olphert in Kate’s sheep farm’s barn that provided the genesis of a new business idea that would combine their joint love of all things ‘re-loved’ with a small event company. 

It initially involved Mariana and Kate establishing Lamb & Newt, an amalgamation of Kate’s sheep credentials and the first syllable of Mariana’s surname. They were joined soon after by other friends, Hannah Stubbington (an event facilitator and furniture restorer) and textile artist Louise Greene. Together they staged successful antique pop-up events in Kate’s working barn with a third of the space always given over to a makeshift, but highly popular café.

But the experimental dip into the world of hospitality that began in 2018 also revealed differing priorities. “The original plan was to fit the operation around everyone’s other worlds, but after the pandemic I wanted to take things further and make the business more permanent, which was difficult for the others,” explains Mariana.

It was agreed that Mariana would take the Lamb & Newt business and set up in the Square in South Harting, their picture-perfect village with a traditional primary school, an ancient church, as well as a wonderfully good grocery store and an ancient inn. The project involved Mariana and her husband Joe, a builder who unusually and usefully combines his trade with an art school education in fine art, purchasing a building that used to contain two separate businesses – a hairdresser and a carpet shop – but had been empty for six years. They planned to convert it into two connected halves, one for Lamb & Newt, and the other for Mariana’s planned café. 

“I initially intended calling it The Folly, after the intriguing 18th-century Vandalian Tower that guards the village, but quickly realised people might confuse it with the Folly Wine Bar, a long-established business some four miles away in Petersfield,” she says.

They eventually plumped for ‘La Follia’ – Italian for folly or madness, as well as one of the most sublime pieces of music ever written by Vivaldi – finally securing ownership of the building just one week before the first pandemic lockdown in early 2020. Rather than panicking, Mariana used the downtime to carefully plan her new establishment. “For a start, I needed to find staff and also the right suppliers to make my business credible. Covid gave me the time to really immerse myself in the hospitality business.” 

To continue reading the full interview, turn to page 16 of our September issue. 

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