Carbone: The World’s Most Star-Studded Restaurant Arrives In London

There are cult restaurants, and then there is Carbone. Despite landing in New York’s Greenwich Village over 12 years ago, the Italian-American joint is still one of the city’s most in-demand spots. Securing a reservation is akin to getting Glastonbury tickets – booking a table requires setting an alarm, logging on at 10am sharp and refreshing the page frantically, often to no avail.

This is no surprise considering its celebrity clientele. On any given night, you could be dining beside Rihanna, Drake, Beyoncé or Leonardo DiCaprio. Even Barack Obama has been spotted there (while serving as President), reportedly sitting at table 45 and ordering a dirty martini. While the original Carbone draws in the biggest star factor, all eight branches around the globe are big hits in their respective cities, from Las Vegas to Dubai. And each summer, A-listers descend upon an undisclosed location in Miami for Carbone Beach, the annual supper club which ties in with the Miami Grand Prix (Travis Kelce, Jamie Foxx, Winnie Harlow and LeBron James have all attended in past years).

But will the red sauce restaurant resonate in London’s Grosvenor Square?

Inside Carbone London

Carbone opens its doors in Mayfair this week, fittingly housed within the former American Embassy, right beside the new Chancery Rosewood. A month ahead of the launch, I was given a first look – and a chance to meet the eponymous founder, Queens-born celebrity chef Mario Carbone, alongside co-owner Jeff Zalaznick.

First impressions? In classic Carbone style, the restaurant dazzles with bold interiors designed to channel old-school New York glamour: think checkerboard marble flooring, plush burgundy booths, black-and-white striped seats and intricate mosaic tableware. It’s spread across two floors, with the sprawling main dining room located down a crimson staircase – sure to be a popular snapping spot for London’s Instagrammers. Art has always been pivotal to Carbone’s restaurants, and the British branch follows suit, with an impressive collection lining the walls, curated by art dealer Vito Schnabel and featuring works from the likes of Rene Ricard, Ai Weiwei and Rita Ackermann. 

Carbone and Zalaznick – who opened the original Carbone under the Major Food Group umbrella in 2013 alongside partner chef Rich Torrisi – have had their sights set on a London opening right from the get-go. ‘London and New York have always felt like brother-sister cities,’ says Carbone, as we meet in the London restaurant’s private dining room. ‘So this has always been the dream other major city in the world we want to be in.’ 

Back in the early days of Carbone, the pair made numerous trips to London searching for the perfect location, but nothing fit the bill. They had their hearts set on Mayfair, and decided to wait until the right place came along – and sure enough, albeit over a decade on, their patience paid off. ‘It’s beyond what we could have ever imagined, in the original American embassy, and in such a historic and central location in Mayfair; it was obviously worth the wait,’ says Zalaznick.

The Menu

So what’s on the menu? Carbone is all about Italian-American comfort food – as Zalaznick puts it: ‘We don’t want to serve you anything you have never had before, we just want to make you the best version you’ve ever had.’

Diners hoping for the signatures won’t be disappointed. You’ll find all the fan favourites: the legendary spicy vodka rigatoni, the Caesar alla ZZ salad, the veal parmesan, the lobster ravioli, the lemon cheesecake. ‘Most of the core menu is here, the dishes that I think people come to expect,’ says Carbone. But there are some UK-specific additions too, like a scallops rosmarino starter made with Scottish diver scallops. And if there’s a small change that would make a dish more appealing to you, don’t be afraid to ask – unlike many top eateries, the kitchen team won’t turn their noses up at substitutions here. Indeed, the restaurant’s generous hospitality ethos is written at the top of the menu, ‘a piacere’, meaning ‘as you like it’.

There’s plenty of theatre to be excited about too. The dover sole piccata is deboned tableside, while desserts are ferried around the restaurant on a tray to help you pick (opt for the bananas foster and it will be flambéed in front of your eyes). 

Jeff Zalaznick and Mario Carbone (c) Sofi Adams

The Service

Service, meanwhile, is executed as a performance. Carbone doesn’t have waiters, instead there are charismatic captains donning Zac Posen tuxedos. The pre-requisites? ‘You have to be someone who has dedicated your life to this craft,’ says Zalaznick. ‘This is not your second job.’

Initially, they were trained at ‘captain camps’ at Carbone’s apartment in Manhattan. ‘We looked at it almost like a movie – the script, the cadence of how meals should be eaten, then teaching them to take you down that journey.’ But that’s not to say the captains shouldn’t show their personalities. ‘That was one of the things that I hated about these fine dining restaurants,’ Zalaznick adds. ‘Everyone acted exactly the same – they were all robots.’

Another crucial part is being able to keep their cool when serving famous faces. ‘We’re really careful about taking care of people, and being very conscious of their anonymity and making sure that they’re treated just like everyone else,’ says Carbone. ‘The last thing that they want is to be fussed over – they spend their whole life [being] fussed over.’

Whether the London branch will attract a similar calibre of guests is yet to be seen. Will Paul Mescal stop by for dinner? Could it be the venue for Victoria Beckham’s next birthday bash? Carbone himself is more interested in attracting top chefs – his dream diner, he tells us, would be Marco Pierre White. 

He’s keen to stress, though, that you can’t cultivate a celebrity restaurant: it happened organically with Carbone. Fatigued by the stuffiness of fine dining, the founding trio set out to create a new standard – a place where you’d still get top-quality food and slick service, but in a more relaxed, fun environment. And it worked. ‘All you can do is make a great restaurant, take good care of people, and it sort of happens,’ he says. ‘We’re excited to be the next great amenity of Mayfair.’ 

Opening 17 September 2025, book at carbonelondon.com