The Milanese group’s first restaurant in Britain occupies the War Office’s old meeting chamber on Whitehall, lit by Murano glass made for the room.
Langosteria’s London restaurant has taken a room with a past. The Milanese seafood group runs nine restaurants, from Milan and Paris to Paraggi, Porto Cervo and St. Moritz. Its first in Britain has opened at The OWO on Whitehall, inside Raffles London. At its centre is the Historic Room, once the British War Office’s meeting chamber. Dinner runs from Tuesday to Saturday, and lunch followed from 8 September.
A chamber from the War Office
The OWO was built in 1906 as the War Office. Langosteria’s own page for the restaurant recalls the people who worked there, Winston Churchill and Lord Haldane among them, and Ian Fleming, who found material for James Bond in its offices. The building now holds Raffles London, 85 private residences and, by Langosteria’s count, nine restaurants and three bars.
ThirtyOne Design, the restaurant’s project architect, describes its starting point as what the building already had: monumental corridors, original wood panelling, decorated ceilings, historic mosaics and grand fireplaces. The concept came from the architect Carlo Samarati, who shaped Langosteria’s look for many years. The studio carried it through from feasibility to opening, as part of the wider six-year restoration of The OWO.
Venini glass and a messenger wall
In the studio’s plan, the restaurant begins at a bar built around a central island of travertine and Canaletto walnut. Beyond it lies the Historic Room, its original architecture kept, under a Murano glass chandelier by Venini, one of a set of fittings the glassmaker made for Langosteria alone.
The Messenger Wall once served as a discreet passage for confidential communications inside the War Office, and it now connects the bar to the private dining room.
Three ingredients to a plate
Enrico Buonocore built the house, and the cooking draws on his roots on the Amalfi coast. Langosteria reduces its approach to three ingredients a dish (fish, vegetables and sauce) and to Buonocore’s own rule that the kitchen never uses technique to cover lesser produce. The group’s best-known plates include smoked spaghetti with rock lobster and Amalfi lemon, linguine with tuna bottarga, raw scampi and lime, and a King Crab à la catalane dressed in a seven-ingredient sauce. Raffles London says the menu pairs those signatures with dishes made only for London.
Dinner is served from 5pm, with food from 5.30pm, and the bar opens at 5pm; lunch runs from noon to 3pm. The dress code is smart casual.
Langosteria offers the London restaurant in full for exclusive hire, and the studio’s plan gives it a separate private dining room off the bar. Neither the group nor the hotel has published a capacity for either.