It feels strangely appropriate that The Big Mamma Group is moving into The City.
There is something almost cosmically inevitable about a restaurant empire built on maximalism that it should move into a neighbourhood defined by its own excesses. Yes, the Franco-Italian culinary-industrial complex that produced Circolo Popolare and its 20 thousand liquor bottles, Jacuzzi and its mirrored bank vault, Gloria and its flower-covered ceiling, is now about to land in an area where those things are basically par for the course.
We should point out that this news is, at the moment, pure conjecture based on nothing but the cool, bureaucratic language of an alcohol licensing application to the local council. But then it would be weird for them to put together a massive blueprint & premises plan if they weren’t planning on moving in.
So what do these applications and whatnot actually say? Well, they’ll be pitching up at 1-6 Lombard Street, which is a cool 6,500 square meters of Grade-II listed opulence – an acreage of dining space that, if their other locations are any indication, will likely house velvet booths, gilded mirrors, and at least one decorative installation requiring scaffolding.
On the menu, we can expect the usual Big Mamma theatrics: pasta served from a wheel of cheese the size of a car tire, cocktails that arrive in vessels better suited to a Renaissance banquet, and desserts so structurally ambitious they could require planning permission.
If they pull it off with the same aplomb that has characterised their other venues? Then this will turn out to be a very good business move indeed.
NOTE: Big Mamma City should, hopefully, we think, probably be opening this spring. Ish. We’ll be back when it does with the full scoop. In the meantime, you can keep an eye on the Big Mamma website.
Big Mamma City | East 1-6 Lombard Street, EC3V 9AA
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