Paris-based Big Mamma Group are opening two enormous new Instagram-friendly Italianate extravaganzas this month – Circolo Popolare (pictured) in Manchester, their first UK venue outside London, and Barbarella in Canary Wharf.
Circolo Popolare Manchester, which launched last week, is themed around an al-fresco festa in Sicily and set across two floors of ex-footballer Gary Neville’s £400million St Michael’s development in the city centre. It is the second Circolo Popolare, following the Fitzrovia original that wins high ratings as a “top party place” in the 2025 Harden’s guide (with the maximum score of 5/5 for ambience).
Barbarella, which opens next week in the former All Bar One in Canary Wharf’s South Colonnade, is billed as a 1970s retro-inspired ‘wild jungle-themed city pad’, accommodating 225 guests on two floors with a cocktail bar and a waterfront terrace with its own gelato menu. The menu features extra-thin Roman-style pizza, extra-long one metre spaghettone, ‘Italian tomato tatin’ with Parmigiano cream and 1.2kg Cornish T-bone steaks.
Circolo Popolare Manchester can cater for 280 guests over two storeys that have been kitted out by Big Mamma’s in-house interior design team Studio Kiki, with numerous trinkets from flea markets across Italy as well as silk pendant lights, more than 5,000 vintage bottles, and a canopy of eucalyptus trees.
Big Mamma co-founder Tigrane Seydoux says: “Manchester has been a place we have always dreamed of opening in, we’d been admiring this city with its crazy restaurant (and music!) scene for a while now and had been looking out for the perfect location for over three years. We love the energy here. It’s young, fun and vibrant. Manchester has so much going on, not just in terms of the restaurant scene but fashion, sports, plus new emerging brands.
“This opportunity within St Michael’s felt too good to miss, the chance to completely craft our own space, but also the challenge of remoulding a very modern building into a restaurant that feels like it’s been there for years, with overgrown jasmine and eucalyptus plus all the Italian antiques, it makes the experience of stepping through the doors completely transportative.”
Tigrane and his business partner Victor Lugger launched Big Mamma in Paris 10 years ago and established their UK presence with the 2019 opening of Gloria in Shoreditch. Their other London restaurants are Ave Mario, Carlotta and Jacuzzi. English investment fund McWin took a majority shareholding two years ago.
