Circolo Popolare: First look at Gloria Trattoria's new sibling restaurant in the West End

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Ailis Brennan20 June 2019

A sister restaurant to flamboyant Shoreditch trattoria Gloria opens end of the month – and these are the first images of Circolo Popolare’s ostentatious interior and menu.

Hot on the heels of the success of the east London Italian, Paris-based restaurateurs Victor Lugger and Tigrane Seydoux of Big Mamma Group will open the Sicilian-inspired restaurant in Fitzrovia on June 28.

Circolo Popolare’s lavish interior boasts walls lined with more than 20,000 contemporary and vintage spirit bottles, thousands of hanging festoon lights, and a heavily planted decor that stretches greenery up the walls and across the ceiling.

A similarly lavish menu will feature the likes of metre-long pizzas decked with Puglian burrata, a pasta dish called “Crab me by the linguine” that comes topped with a whole crab shell and a towering “Dessert Island” pudding which looks set to rival Gloria’s Insta-famous lemon meringue pie. The “over the top” selection will include a selection of smaller cicchetti plates for sharing.

The 9,000 sq ft site on Rathbone Square is set to seat 280 covers, with 60 spots available on its outdoor terrace, also decadently planted.

Gloria Trattoria opened in February of this year, received a four-star review from Evening Standard restaurant critic Fay Maschler, and became the "it" restaurant of early 2019. Along with its growing restaurant portfolio in London, The Big Mamma Group also boasts seven trattorias in across Paris and Lille, along with a 50,000 sq ft food market, La Felicità, in the French capital.

Circolo Popolare will open on June 28 2019 at Rathbone Square, Fitzrovia. For more information, visit bigmammagroup.com.

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