This big-hearted Italian restaurant is full of quirky vintage finds

Image credit: Jérôme Galland

Just when it feels like England has gone totally mad (Brexit, anyone?), along comes Paris-based restaurateurs Victor Lugger and Tigrane Seydoux of the Big Mamma Group. Their newest 340-seat restaurant, Circolo Popolare (Italian for popular circle), recently opened in London’s Fitzrovia, is already bringing smiles to our faces, riotously-patterned joy to our hearts and delicious Sicilian-inspired dishes to our tastebuds.

Image credit: Jérôme Galland

The restaurant’s look and feel are deliberately festive. “It tries to recreate the perfect moment I arrived at my best friend [and business partner] Tigrane’s wedding three years ago, overlooking the sea at sunset in Sicily,” says co-owner Lugger (the pair already have eight other restaurants in Paris and Lille, including the 4,500-square-metre La Felicità food market — apparently the largest of its kind in Europe). “Our musician friends were playing a tarentella [southern Italian folk music] and a smiling person handed me a glass of spritz. We wanted Circolo to be somewhere to relive that moment again.”

Image credit: Jérôme Galland

The party spirit certainly emanates through Circolo’s interiors. An array of 20,000 bottles of vintage spirits and wines line the cavernous restaurant’s shelves and a gloriously-scented forest of peppermint eucalyptus branches are woven with fabric flowers and strings of festoon lights, stretching across the double-height salvaged wooden beamed ceilings.

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Framed photographs, postcards and travel posters, over two hundred vintage plates, and religious icons have been hung to fill almost every inch of every wall (including the stairwell leading down to the bathrooms). Shelves are crammed with Italian coloured glass collected from “an old nonna in Italy,” says Brooke Carden, Senior Designer at Studio Kiki, the team behind the restaurant’s design. “As she had so much of it, she’d arrange it by colour to be able to distinguish the pieces. We were so touched by her love for it that we wanted to carry on the tradition in Circolo.”

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There are long communal tables to invite convivial sharing, which have been teamed with wicker chairs “collected over a long period from Italian vintage markets,” says Carden. White-washed tadelakt-plastered booths allow for more intimate dinners, with cushion seating made from hand woven North African rugs. “North African arts and crafts are a huge inspiration in Sicilian design, so this is our nod to that,” she says.

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Other traditional touches include curtains reflecting the coastal textile patterns found in Sicily, Moroccan-style pendant lights supplied by an Italian producer, and lampshades made with parchment and rope. Dishes are served on Italian Majolica ware, hand made by Fima Deruta especially for Big Mamma. “The chicken motif is central to Fima’s identity and this beautiful crockery has become our signature,” furthers Carden.

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As for the cocktails, start with an ‘Amalfi Spritz’ (with limoncello, prosecco and passion fruit) or a fruity, gingery ‘Big Mamma vodka punch’. There are cute nods to British classics, like a full English breakfast with Tuscan pork sausage and Pigna beans, or the ‘Eggcentric’ Italian scotch egg made with cinta senese Tuscan pork sausage, lemon zest and fennel seeds.

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Huge pizza ovens churn out metre-long pizzas with humorously named toppings like ‘John Malkofish’ (yellow tomatoes, briny tuna, anchovies and confit lemons) and ‘Elizabeth Regina’ (ricotta cream, Sicilian herbs, prosciutto crudo and mushrooms), or smaller sizes with toppings like fresh beef carpaccio or burrata with almonds, capers and olives. There are salads such as ‘Sunkissed Caprese’ – fresh Italian tomatoes, hand-torn mozzarella and Sicilian oregano – and ‘Crudo Crocante’ lettuce cups filled with Cornish sea bass, confit tomatoes, oranges and olives.

Main dishes are hearty and moreish thanks to Neapolitan-born and raised head chef Salvatore Moscato’s take on his own childhood memories of his mother’s feasts and his grandfather’s authentic nine-hour ragu. Silky pasta comes as Circolo’s ‘La Gran Carbonara’, with Italian cured guanciale and egg yolk, served in the whole round of pecorino; as ‘Sfoglia al Ragu’ giant handkerchief squares topped with Tuscan cinta senese pork ragù, aubergines and parmiggiano; or ‘Crab Me By The Paccheri’ pasta tubes ladled with crab, red gurnard, mussels and tarragon.

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At Gloria, Big Mamma’s 1970’s Capri-style sister trattoria which opened earlier this year in the hip East End area of Shoreditch, its dramatic, towering lemon meringue pie has caused a huge sensation; here the pièce de résistance is ‘Dessert Island’, an outrageously indulgent OTT take on the French classic ‘île flottante’ which comes 20cm high, covered with sticky caramelised popcorn which the waiter then finishes off with a generous pouring of rich crème anglaise. Extravagant? Absolutely.

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For warmer summer nights in the city, diners can head to the uber-cool and leafy and terrace – packed with terracotta pots of herbs, lavenders and ferns, overlooking the gardens of newly-developed Rathbone Square, a stone’s throw from Oxford Street and Tottenham Court Road.

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Circolo Polare’s whacky menu and friendly staff are a draw card, but it’s the eclectic interiors, packed with vintage finds, which make the restaurant feel so unique. “We try to reuse and recycle, instead of discard, these old gems diligently sourced across France and Italy at vintage markets and from wizened old dealers,” says Carden. “Every piece is different and has its own story,” she furthers. “We’ve drawn inspiration from the best bits of everything we’ve seen in Italy, and then built layer upon layer to get this final OTT result.” In the end, Circolo Poplare is a celebration “of sharing and enjoying festive Italian life through food and charm,” says Carden.

Visit: BigMammaGroup.com