Osteria Vibrato’s Charlie Mellor: “Are boozy business lunches still a thing? I want to bring them back.”

Osteria Vibrato, which opens on Greek Street in Soho this week, marks the return to the London restaurant scene of Charlie Mellor, founder of the late lamented Laughing Heart in Hackney. Mellor, a classically trained opera singer turned sommelier, is joined by his friend and fellow sommelier Cameron Dewar. Leading the kitchen: Louis Lingwood (ex Quo Vadis, Via Carota, Toklas), in collaboration with Gaia Enria (of Burro e Salvia in Shoreditch which closed last year). We caught up with Charlie ahead of opening week to hear all about his plans to create “a new Soho institution”.

Congratulations on the opening of Osteria Vibrato. How does it feel to be back?

“It feels good! This particular juncture is about as high intensity and stressful as it gets but it’s been a really rewarding and beautiful process. I’m excited to come back and engage with people, work with my staff, and think about things in a new way which is obviously very different from when I was 29 years old trying to found my first business.”

Tell us about Osteria Vibrato. What can we expect?

“The thing I’ve been saying to all the staff, and it’s been the guiding principle behind everything that we’re doing, is incredibly warm and generous and occasionally slightly performative hospitality. That’s the cornerstone of the product. Everything has been reverse-engineered from there. There is so much in the world of restaurants that I am very passionate about, and there are things that I feel like I have an understanding of and competencies in and experience doing, but taking care of people is my first love and it’s something that’s really needed at the moment.”

Had you been looking for a site in Soho in particular?

“What I wanted was a place where there’s a volume of people, because it’s so tough these days. All of East London is really feeling it; lots of neighbourhood restaurants are feeling it. Even if you’re managing your revenue really well and your product is really good, if the revenue isn’t there, it’s really hard to remain competitive and thrive in this difficult time. Moving central felt like a nice thing but if I could have picked anywhere, it was going to be Soho. And the more we started thinking about what we wanted our restaurant to be, the more we realised that it had to be Soho. It wasn’t going to feel quite right anywhere else. We wanted to be part of this exciting movement of quality independent operators returning to the neighbourhood.”

In terms of the concept and design, what else did you have your heart set on?

“Because of the wine-led fun environment I wanted, it did seem that something in the Franco-Italian realm was going to be where we ended up and, the more I thought about it, the more I realised just how much of a deep love I have for the cuisine of Italy. When we found this particular space, it hit like a lightning bolt: this is going to be an Italian restaurant. So I started thinking about Italian details. One thing that I’ve wanted to have since I was a really young guy and I first went to Venice and started seeing amazing terrazzo floors, was [a terrazzo floor]. We don’t have an unending budget to go crazy on everything but I did want to find a few key details to really push the boat out on. We’ve done that with the floors; we’ve done that with some joinery; some amazing wood panelling and seating; these are the things that I’m really excited about. These are the details that I’ve been working hard to dial in since even before we completed on the deal.”

It feels like there’s a trattoria movement in the air.

“Totally. I feel like one of these days I’ll action an idea in time to be first to the party! I’m really pleased to see that I’m not the only one who has had that idea because it means that other clever people think that it’s the right thing to be doing.”

It’s exciting that you have Gaia Enria involved.

“She’s so wonderful. Gaia and I have been friends for a very long time. I’ve always really admired and respected her skills and her taste, not just in the area of pasta or the world of food or wine: she’s a really elegant person; she’s got great ideas and a great feel for design. I just felt like at the beginning of the project, it would make a lot of sense to have someone with such a deep and authentic connection to the repertoire attached to it. It just came about that she had to close the doors on Burro e Salvia just weeks before. I wondered if it might be a bit too soon but I said “Can we have a bottle of wine and a conversation?” and I suggested that maybe in a high-level advisory capacity, we might be a safe place to land. It’s been an amazing relationship; we’ve been travelling together; and she’s been instrumental in adding nuance and depth to the ideas that I’ve been coming up with for the menu. And when we started bringing in Louis, our head chef, it was a really nice process.

Laughing Heart always had a reputation as an industry hangout. Do you see the same happening at Osteria Vibrato?

“I want to show a lot of love to anyone who walks through the door! The Laughing Heart became an industry hotspot in no small part because of the pretty unique trading hours. If you wanted to have some focused cooking and something quality to drink, there was only one option at that time of the evening. That wrote itself in a way. I want [this to be] my busy lunch and dinner Soho institution restaurant, that’s what I’m trying to make and I hope that it has a broad appeal. The cooking will be energetic, it will be detailed, it will be something that will appeal to thoughtful hospitalitarians, but also to tourists, the pre-theatre crowd and the foodies of the city. And boozy business lunches, if they’re still a thing? I want to bring them back! It’s a democratic offering but not dumbed down.”

What can you tell us about the food and wine?

“Given the fact that myself and Cameron between us have over four decades of sommelier experience, we’re pretty excited about the wine programme. We had up to 500 references on the wine list at the Heart; this will be closer to 300 but they are really exciting bottles. We’ve been doing some awesome work, working with friends, working with brokers, fantastic suppliers, and also mining my own cellar. So there are lots of bottles with age and there are lots of interesting things. We are sensible with the margins, so anything that reaches a certain price point goes straight onto a cash margin. If you’re minded to drink the big stuff, it’s going to be at the best price you can find in town pretty well. It’s going to be a lovely curation of equal parts Italian and French wines. The bar programme is going to be really fun too. I’m sort of doing the old Soho thing, so we’ve got a lot of classic drinks, a lot of Dick Bradsell references, and iconic serves from the great bars around Italy, London and New York – quite traditional but precisely executed with really beautiful glassware. The food’s coming along really beautifully. It’s the kind of cooking that, when it comes down to it, it’s how good is the thing that you buy? It’s the choice of olive oil, it’s how much amazing white pepper are you using, it’s how much seasoning. It’s really dialling it in. There will be lots of beautiful things to put in your mouth!”

Osteria Vibrato, 6 Greek Street, Soho, London, W1D 4DE

osteriavibrato.co.uk