Polpo owner Russell Norman today confirmed that he’ll be opening another Italian restaurant in Soho later this Summer. Spuntino will open up just off Brewer Street at some point over the next couple of months. According to Russell, it will be ‘a sort-of speakeasy with food; it will feel like a machine-age downtown NYC Italian diner’. That pretty much reflects what Russell told Hot Dinners when we interviewed him last year when he told us; ‘I’d be disingenuous if I was to say that that second restaurant wouldn’t have elements of Polpo, and may even have a connection in terms of the name, certainly in terms of the feel and the concept. But it won’t just be a carbon copy, Disneyland version of the first. It would need to be interesting to me.’
Spuntino, if you were wondering, is another word for the Venetian tapas or cicheti that have turned Polpo into an instant success with punters queueing out the door from day one.
The new restaurant will be even smaller than Polpo - with seats for just 30 diners. Head chef will be Rachel O'Sullivan, currently sous-chef at Polpo.
