Circolo Popolare

Circolo Popolare opened on Rathbone Place in June 2019, the second London restaurant from the Big Mamma group after Gloria in Shoreditch, and has stayed one of the hardest tables in Fitzrovia to book ever since. The room reads like a Sicilian courtyard built indoors: terracotta and black checkerboard floors, a canopy of trailing greenery and festoon lights overhead, and two long arched walls stacked floor to ceiling with spirits bottles. Large communal tables run the length of the front room, built for groups rather than couples, and a curtained archway in yellow and red opens onto a planted summer terrace.

A second, quieter room sits behind the main floor, distinguished by a full-height tree growing through its centre and walls that echo the front room's bottle display. The whole restaurant, front room, back room and terrace together, takes private hire for parties and corporate events, and each space can also be booked on its own for a smaller gathering.

The menu runs to Sicilian grill dishes, hand-stretched pizza and large sharing plates, served in a room built to be loud rather than hushed. Circolo trades on its look as much as its food: every corner of the front room and the tree-lined back room reads as a set piece, and the restaurant remains one of the most photographed interiors in London years after opening.