The long-awaited sequel to Knightsbridge’s Sale e Pepe transports you to the Italian coast – limoncello, lobster linguine and all
The background
Sale e Pepe has always been that restaurant. You know, the Italian restaurant you went to as a child and have returned to for special occasions ever since? That’s the space it occupies in Markus Thesleff’s life, anyway. The CEO and founder of Thesleff Group – the hospitality collective behind the new opening – grew up visiting the OG Sale e Pepe with his parents. His plan with Sale e Pepe Mare was to honour that legacy (‘it’s part of London’s cultural fabric,’ he says) while creating something contemporary and, it has to be said, flashy.
Thesleff has a golden touch with sequel spots. His team is also behind Los Mochis City, the ultra-glam second iteration of beloved Notting Hill neighbourhood restaurant Los Mochis. It’s fair to say he’s aiming for more of the same with Sale e Pepe Mare: more glam, more atmosphere – and more seafood.
The space
The restaurant is on the ground floor of classic London hotel The Langham, in the space that used to be the (sadly, short-lived) Mimosa. If not done right, hotel restaurants can feel like a concept tacked onto an existing space, with a nicely designed menu the only distinguishing factor between the hotel lobby and the new crew in the kitchen. Not Sale e Pepe Mare.
To paraphrase Carly Simon, you walk into Sale e Pepe Mare like you’re walking into a yacht. The streamlined, wood-panelled walls and oversized mirrors feel like a 1960s Italian pleasure boat, complete with real olive trees and a rippling marble bar with wave-like patterns. The dolce is very much vita-ing.
The cloud-shaped lights emit a soft glow – the kind that makes anyone look sexy – and has somehow managed to do some magic and mimic sunlight glinting through the glasses on the table. It’s a shame the view out the huge windows is of the ’60s office block over the road, and not some glittering coastline in Capri.
The food
I’m going to say it. The menu is too big. It’s a triple-fold, double-hander that requires several pilates classes’ worth of upper body strength to hold up and pore over. Thank God we have our waiter, Raul – a man whose temperament is so sunny he surely has a big spoonful of la dolce vita before every shift – to guide us through his favourites, with the gusto of a local osteria owner running through his wife’s cooking (‘I have meat, I have fish, I have potatoes,’ etc).
We start with prawns – big, juicy ones, grilled on cast iron and sprinkled with flakes of fried garlic on top like a scaly pangrattato. Then we have octopus, a Sale e Pepe classic – charred yet soft tentacles sinking into a bed of borlotti-bean purée, shot through with a snifter of smokiness (by way of paprika).
There’s tableside theatre, too. We watch a waiter delicately chiselling a huge dover sole a few seats down, before our own big cheese arrives. Literally. A giant wheel of pecorino is left next to us just long enough for my boyfriend, Luke, to start fantasising about heaving it onto our table and slurping it down with a spoon. But just in time – Raul is there to twirl and twiddle and load on black pepper with a comically large pepper grinder, bewitching the strands into the perfect cacio e pepe.
There’s a slight misfire with a mildly overdone crab tagliolini (perhaps it also got distracted by the giant cheese wheel?), but dessert brings it home: a sublime tiramisu, piled with mouth-coating cocoa powder and just the right amount of coffee. ‘There’s no effort to eating tiramisu,’ says Luke, a sworn cheese-course-over-pudding person who said he was full, yet seems to be battling me for every bite.
The drinks
This is an Italian restaurant, so there are five types of negroni (served out of kitsch glass jugs), alongside a few summer-leaning Sale e Pepe cocktails. I have a “seaside cosmo”, and it tastes – in the best way – like a strawberry ice lolly you’d get from a beachside ice-cream van. The wine list is more of a wine book (almost 50 pages), so you’re best off asking the sommelier for a pairing – our 2024 pecorino is like sunshine in a glass.
A word of warning: nobody gets out without limoncello. A seemingly bottomless carafe of the stuff will land on your table – rocket fuel for the tube journey home.
The verdict
Like most Italian restaurants in London, Sale e Pepe Mare pitched itself as bringing a slice of la dolce vita to the capital. But unlike most Italian restaurants in London, it has succeeded. Everything about Sale e Pepe Mare is designed to transport you to summer on the Italian coast – from the playlist to the cocktails to the piles of seemingly boat-fresh prawns. I left full, smiling and looking up flights to Capri on Skyscanner. Sale e Pepe Mare has that effect.
1C Portland Place, London W1B 1JA; saleepepe.co.uk
