LARDO London

The opening of LARDO, our new pizza and charcuterie restaurant is only a day away now, and so we decided to say thank you to all those lovely people who’ve helped us get it this far in the best way we could think of – with beer and pork! It’s been a month of scrambling to get everything finished but we’re over the moon with how the space has turned out, and this was a chance to share it with everyone else.

Anyone who’s opened a restaurant will tell you exactly the same, but it really was down to the wire – we were busy polishing and cleaning and prodding the disco oven into life right up until the point when people started showing up. It didn’t seem to matter. Our brilliant staff kept everyone fed and watered despite being surrounded by our hungry and thirsty friends. We served our guests slices of our fennel pollen salami, and our chefs Damian and Christian sliced fatty porchetta between chunks of bread. The late stayers were treated to slices of lardo pizza. All of you lucky people will get a chance to sample this over the next week.

It seems slightly unreal actually – two years on from the start of our road trip around the USA, when the spark of the idea happened, and we’re finally there. During that trip, when we met a bunch of people who were making closer connections between the farmer and the chefs, it seemed like a logical step to try and create a project which does the same in London. Living in this neighbourhood, we’re constantly meeting folks who are making or baking or growing something fresh and tasty, and we hope to get lots of this locally grown produce into the food that we’re serving.

We open Monday 9th July – come down and say hello…you can book online on our Facebook page, or just drop in…

Some pictures from the party (more on Flickr):