In New York, Italian-American restaurant Carbone is a favourite of the A-list. Now it has landed in Mayfair, offering dishes such as red-sauce pasta, meatballs, baked clams and more

Words: Bridget Arsenault

London is a melting pot for global cultures and cuisines – Turkish, Polish, Bulgarian, Eastern European, African and, without question, Indian. Yet entirely unexplored is the culinary Venn diagram best described as Italian-American. In the United States, in particular New York, no sooner were the first plates of creamy fettuccine and risotto off the stove than some chef began tinkering with them.

Now, one of the most celebrated interpreters of Italian food in America, Queens-born chef Mario Carbone, and co-owner Jeff Zalaznick have arrived in Mayfair, with a new restaurant on the former site of the US embassy at 30 Grosvenor Square. “We wanted to create the kind of restaurant that we grew up with,” explains Zalaznick when we meet. The original Carbone opened in 2013 in New York City. Encouraged by formidable portion sizes and “magic moment” veal chops, the Greenwich Village restaurant immediately garnered – then sustained – cult status.

For 12 years, the restaurant's impenetrable waiting list has been as widely reported as its celebrity sightings, including Rihanna, Taylor Swift, Barack Obama, BeyoncĂŠ, Drake, Leonardo DiCaprio – the list goes on. “We occupy a very particular style of cuisine and service,” says Carbone. “We generally trace its roots back to New York, where a large section of the migration process happened from southern Italy.” Think red-sauce pasta, the ultimate Italian-American translation, or tender skillet meatballs. At Carbone, “we take you through a journey”, says Zalaznick. “Those couple of hours with us, it's a very important part of our story. It is an immersive dining experience here.”

With restaurants in New York, Dallas, Miami and Las Vegas, it's a story that's important to get right. And now, Carbone enters a new international chapter. “If you asked Mario and me after we opened our first Carbone where would our second location be, our answer would have been London,” says Zalaznick. “Then we decided to do something that we rarely do: exhibit patience. 

And so, a decade and 70-plus restaurants later, we finally found the right spot.”Spread across two floors, inside the damask-wrapped Ken Fulk-designed interiors, dining is a form of theatre. Promising some 200-a-night covers, expect large slaps of marble flooring, glossy mahogany walls and low-slung chandeliers recalling frosted ciambella (spiralled Italian cakes). There are extra-wide passages between tables (in Mayfair, space is the ultimate luxury and mammoth artworks from the likes of Ai Weiwei and Rita Ackermann.

At Carbone, no expense is spared. Don't expect a reinvention. “Most people who are familiar with the New York Italian menu could probably write down half the items that are on the Mayfair menu today,” says Carbone. “Our goal is not to make you something you've never had before. It's to make you the best version you've ever had of it.”Dishes are delivered by captains (or head waiters) dressed in Zac Posen-designed burgundy tuxedos, standing tableside and serving up beef carpaccio, baked clams, caesar salad (tossed in real time) and spicy rigatoni (a Carbone signature).

Still hungry? Continue on with tortellini and some meatballs for the middle of the table, then finish with a branzino stuffed with lemon slices and fresh herbs. But perhaps the most important question of them all. Will anyone actually get in? “I mean, the impossible-to-get-reservation is simply a response to supply and demand,” says Zalaznick. “We have a pretty large dining room. We have a beautiful terrace outside. We have an upstairs area. That feeling of exclusivity, that is really more once you're here and the way you feel once you're here, versus a wall that's up to stop you from coming in. We want you to come in. We want to share this with you. That's why we came here and built this incredible place.”Â