France’s Big Mamma group opens its latest cartoon-Italian extravaganza in London today – Edmondo, a 200-cover Milan-inspired osteria close to Bank station in the Square Mile.
Billed as ‘Piazza Duomo meets the City’, Edmondo’s lavish interior is modelled on the Villa Necchi Campiglio, a 1935 villa built for a family of industrialists in central Milan by architect Piero Portaluppi.
The menu combines imported Italian ingredients with prime British produce, including meat from Cornish butcher Philip Warren. The signature steak is a “humongous 1.2kg Fiorentina”.
There is a cocktail list tailored to the City, including a house barrel-aged Boulevardier rested in oak for three months and a cosy Nocino Old Fashioned infused with walnut liqueur, while the cellar is said to be “fully stocked with heavy-hitting Italian wines, from crisp whites to bold Barolos”.
Big Mamma was founded in 2015 by two French Italophiles, Victor Lugger and Tigrane Seydoux. They now have more than 2,000 staff, 36 restaurants in eight countries and a 4,500 sqm food market – La Felicita in Paris. Nine of the venues are in Paris, their base, with London their second city now on seven restaurants.
