Jacob Kenedy and Victor Hugo, owners of acclaimed Soho restaurant Bocca di Lupo and Gelupo gelateria are set to launch a brand new restaurant, Vico, in late August.
The new site will be located at One Cambridge Circus, gateway to the popular Seven Dials, owned by Shaftesbury, and will offer accessible and affordable Italian street food, alongside award-winning Gelupo gelato. The large ground floor space will echo the convivial atmosphere of an Italian piazza, with minimal seating, carnival lighting and playful design.
Chef and co-owner Jacob, renowned for delivering obscure and delicious food highlights from across Italy’s 20 regions, will oversee the menus and operation at Vico as executive chef. His enthusiasm for and knowledge of Italian cooking stems from extended periods of time travelling around Italy and researching its regions and cuisine.
Inexpensive and intensely casual
Food at the new ‘piazza-eria’ will be inexpensive and intensely casual – cutlery frowned upon – with a focus on dishes you’d eat walking along a street. Pizza by the slice, a myriad of polpette and arancini, fried tidbits of Mediterranean seafood, tranches of torte salate etc. Food will be cooked in small quantities and picked by the clientele almost as soon as it’s lifted from the fryers and ovens. There will be, for the most part, no menu – chefs will be cooking at whim what the markets, farms, hunters and fishermen deliver.
Drink will be as inexpensive and casual as the food – only house wine will be served, only by the carafe (125, 250 & 500ml sizes) alongside spritz, beer & soft drinks. At the front of the building a large Gelupo counter will mirror the offering at Archer Street, with on-site production, and all but a couple of the flavours made 100% fresh, every day. Iced desserts will be accompanied by a selection of cakes and fried desserts, alongside Gelupo’s speciality coffees (zabaione, nocciola, affogato).
A place en route
Jacob Kenedy says,“Vico is not a destination, it is a place en route. Somewhere to meet old friends and make new ones. To share a bite and a spritz or a carafe of wine, and then to share another. To come from work, before the theatre, before dinner, for dinner, after dinner, before drinks, en route home. It is a pleasant moment to pause along the hectic road we tread every day, to relax and to smile.”
Commenting on the opening of Vico, Charles Owen, Seven Dials portfolio manager at Shaftesbury, said: “Cambridge Circus is a gateway to Seven Dials and so it is very important the brands in that location complement the wider offer, which Vico achieves perfectly. The new restaurant adds to the vibrancy of the area, re-affirming its reputation as London’s focal point for exciting new concepts.”
The interior will be… surprising. Vico invites you to look when it opens in August.
About Jacob Kenedy and Victor Hugo
In late 2008 Jacob Kenedy and Victor Hugo opened their first – and now award-winning – independent restaurant venture, Bocca di Lupo on Archer Street, Soho. Gelupo, a traditional gelateria and delicatessen, followed in June 2010 directly across the street.
Kenedy’s enthusiasm for and knowledge of Italian cooking and culture stems from extended periods of time travelling around Italy and researching its regions and cuisine. He has written two cookbooks: The Geometry of Pasta (published by Boxtree, May 2010) and BOCCA (published by Bloomsbury, June 2011).
Victor oversees all operations at both restaurants.
Vico, One Cambridge Circus, London, WC2H 8HD
For more information click here
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