Within walking distance of Old Vic and Young Vic, on a lively road of the British capital city, at Waterloo, one of the Olivelli restaurants, a pearl of Italian gastronomy – Sicilian, more precisely – stands out among the usual large retail chains.
Olivelli group has significantly grown up during the years, establishing itself as a point of reference not only for tourists and English people, but also – as a guarantee of its quality – for a lot of Italian people: genuine, authentic tastes that directly send back to the Sicilian land, far far away, but, this way, a little bit closer.
Olivelli restaurants represent a succesful attempt to export the Italian spirit: infact, if there’s a good, honest way to share some wonders of the peninsula, it is, for sure, something not far from this one.
Giovanni Salamone, general manager of the group, has allowed us few minutes to tell us something.
Which is the story of this place?
The first Olivelli restaurant was born in 1934 in Store Street and it was opened by a couple of Sicilians, mr. and mrs. Olivelli. It was 1993 when we bought that restaurant: it had already been sold to others people, but they had reduced it in terrible conditions. So, we took over the business, and after restructuring it, we changed the menu – today we have, for example, panelle, arancine etc. – and we turned what was a trattoria in a real restaurant. In the basement of the restaurant in Store Street, by the way, we found a box full of photos of the very first place. The restaurant in Store Street, actually, was like a little club: there was always a guy playing piano and when theatres closed, most actors went to eat there.
Food we use is very Italian: oil comes from the province of Palermo, coffe from province of Taranto, in Puglia, the base for our ice cream is from Mondello, in Sicily, and so on. The restaurant at Waterloo was born in 2000. Now only six restaurants have remained in the group, after the recession of the global economy: until 2007 restaurants were twelve, then we had to sell. Anyway, we keep on doing: the latest restaurant opened last May, in Dulwich.
Your coffe shop and the restaurant at Waterloo won the Trip Advisor Certficate of Excellence 2015. Which are the requirements to take part to this competition? And what about your coffee?
The restaurants in Store Street and at Christopher’s Place won a prize as well. Our customers let us win: a lot of them thank us everyday. About our coffee shop, the first opened eight years ago, not far from Tower Bridge: I wanted recreate a Sicilian patisserie in London, so I send two of my employees in a famous bakery in Bagheria, to let them learn everything. So, when they came back, we implanted a laboratory here and a well-known Sicilian cook came in London to teach. Now we have only two coffee shops, one at Tottenham Court Road, and the other one at Tower Bridge, but I’d like to open new ones.