Serving modern Italian food, Luca is a restaurant that follows in the footsteps of The River Café and Theo Randall at the InterContinental of British chefs cooking great Italian food.
Launched in Clerkenwell back in 2016 by business partners Johnny Smith and Daniel Willis, Luca is led in the kitchen by former RAC and The Ledbury chef Robert Chambers. The restaurant specialises in serving high-quality ingredients from around the British Isles that are interpreted through an Italian lens.
Pasta and antipasti options are both present and correct, with the menu also featuring a variety of meat and seasonal seafood dishes such as scallops from Orkney, Hebridean lamb, and turbot from Cornwall. The cooking, as you would expect from a restaurant of such pedigree, is skilful, combining both traditional and contemporary elements to great effect.
The restaurant’s design supplements the food neatly, too. Its cavernous interior – the restaurant holds more than 125 covers – is smart and sophisticated. Split between multiple sections, it’s brought together with a visual identity inspired by 1950s art deco Italian graphic design and typography, which underpins the ‘Britalian’ approach.
Luca is a commanding, confidently run restaurant, and one that, as its recent accreditation from Michelin proves, is still going from strength to strength.
