Osteria Vibrato appeared last month on Greek Street, Soho, feeling to any passerby just like any other neutral-fronted Italian restaurant in this pasta-swamped part of the capital. Not much to see here. Pushing your face against the window wouldn’t achieve much, either, apart from an unsightly smear.
Meanwhile, all the in-the-know people – that bunch of infuriating, generously paunched “foodies” who keep London restaurant gossip alive – understood that this particular osteria is the latest opening by Charlie Mellor, former proprietor of the Laughing Heart in Hackney, which opened in 2016 and very quickly became favoured by chefs and industry media types alike, because it took food very seriously, stayed open late and danced a dainty line between debauched and old-school cosseting. It sold pumpkin cappelletti with sage, and chicken liver paté with crisp chicken skin and jellied walnut liqueur. The room was furnished with quirky tables complete with cutlery drawers, and there seemed to be a never-ending party going on in the ground-floor bar. Mellor, the star of the show, led the charge: warm, serious yet with a great capacity for silliness, though weirdly omniscient as to who needed what and when.
