Parisian Restaurateurs Will Add Hot Fitzrovia Site to Shoreditch Debut

Paris’ Italian restaurant group Big Mamma has taken a second site in London. The restaurant on Rathbone Square, Fitzrovia, will join its debut location in Shoreditch, which was confirmed in October.

A tipster who owns multiple food businesses local to Fitzrovia is validated by a copy of the licensing application, which lists the restaurant at 40-41 Rathbone Place. The restaurant group’s Paris portfolio covers fully-fledged restaurants, bars, and smaller pizzerias, but this 7,660 square foot site looks likely to be the former, as with the Shoreditch site on the junction of Great Eastern Street and Charlotte Road. It will be the third restaurant to open outside Paris, with a site in Lille, France joining the two London locations. The site is currently still in the planning stages.

Big Mamma’s identity is built on Italian produce, with Victor Lugger and Tigrane Seydoux namechecking “Stefano Borchini and his incredible Parma ham, Emmanuele Cammarrota in south Puglia and his creamy burrata and Vittorio Calla [who] makes the best n’duja we ever tasted.” Everything, they say, is produced in-house, aside from “strong, slightly bitter” coffee roasted in Paris.

Rathbone Square, self-styled RA SQ, already houses cult-followed Tokyo coffee shop Omotesando Koffee, as well as Crosstown Doughnuts, Joe and the Juice, and Facebook, whose office — could — provide a steady customer base for the new incumbents. The mixed-use residential and retail development is still a relatively new proposition for London restaurants and diners alike, more established in New York and Los Angeles, but with Centre Point — the site of Din Tai Fung’s second London restaurant — a short walk down the road, Fitzrovia and Tottenham Court Road could be leading the way.