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A Restaurant in Identity Crisis Is Coming to Covent Garden

La dolce Vyta is opaque and badly translated

by James Hansen
Smoked salmon and parma ham sandwiches at Vyta, an Italian train station restaurant, opening in Covent Garden, London Vyta [Official Photo]

Vyta (VyTA) is coming from Italy to Covent Garden. The Italian bar and restaurant brand’s arrival was first mooted by MCA in 2017, but, that aside, no-one really knows what to expect — least of all, it seems, the brand itself.

What’s clear

  • Vyta is an Italian bar/restaurant, most often located in train stations and “other prestigious locations.”
  • These train stations and other prestigious locations include stations in Milan, Naples, Venice, Bologna, Rome and Florence.
  • Vyta serves an “upscale” offering of what can be found at most train stations in Italian cities: espresso coffee, fresh orange juice, panini, pastries, and wine.
  • It also has a shop, selling Italian food products.

What’s not

  • Everything else.
  • At the time of writing, attempting to navigate the website returns a server error.
  • Its philosophy: “Water, Wheat, Wine, VyTA is the food philosophy of VyTA: shapes and tastes, aromas and flavours are inspired by the simple elements offered by the nature, such as water, fire and land, man’s expert hand, patience and creativity.”

Water, wheat, wine can at least be parsed; what exactly “VyTA” contributes to its own philosophy is resolutely opaque. Copyright on “vita” may have something to do with it. See also: “man’s expert hand.”

  • Its plans for Covent Garden: “VyTA is the exclusive brand coming to Covent Garden, promoting a new fine food style, where passion for food and the quality of ingredients, selected and processed with expertise, join the architectural design, by architect Daniela Colli, sophisticated and changeable, generated by ordinary matrix as a representation of the true essence of the brand.”

Combining the enjoyment of food with good ingredients and proper cooking is certainly a fine food style, but it’s certainly not a new one; “ordinary matrix” is anyone’s guess. Of course, this is all a case of things getting lost in (google) translation, but that doesn’t bode well for the brand’s dedication to telling London what it’s all about.

The Times’ Marina O’Loughlin offered a short, but astute assessment:

“Whut” indeed.

More (clarity) soon.

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