Casa Macellaio opens in South Kensington on 4 Nov
Roberto Costa is closing the all-meat format that built Macellaio RC and reopening its first site as an Italian osteria, with carpaccio and tagliatelle replacing the butcher's menu.
Casa Macellaio, Roberto Costa's new Italian osteria, opens in South Kensington on 4 November, replacing the original Macellaio RC that built his meat-restaurant group.
The site on Old Brompton Road was the first Macellaio RC, opened by Costa in 2012. The steak-focused concept, built around dry-aged beef sold by weight, grew into a six-site group spanning London and Genoa. Casa Macellaio keeps the address and drops the single-protein menu.
Casa Macellaio echoes his father's trattoria
A butcher shop can serve meat. An osteria has to tell a story too.
The new menu draws on Costa's years working in his father's trattoria in Italy, before he moved into London hospitality. Dishes include carpaccio with Cetara anchovies, tagliatelle with white ragu, cream and truffle, and charcoal-grilled cod with lemon, garlic and rosemary. Tiramisu closes the list.
The wine list runs to bottles from Tuscany and the Piedmontese hills, a wider range than the Ligurian focus of Costa's earlier sites. Cocktails span the Negroni Sbagliato to the Boulevardier.
Costa, who is Genoa-born, said the relaunch reflects what has run through his restaurants from the start: a family hospitality business built around the table, not a single cut of meat.
The move bucks a pattern among London's steak specialists, which have tended to add sites rather than change formats. Costa has kept Macellaio RC's expansion deliberately slow since 2012, opening only six sites in fourteen years, and Casa Macellaio is his first attempt at retiring one of them rather than adding to the count.
A second opening within two months
Casa Macellaio is Costa's second London opening since September, when he launched God Save the Pizza in Exmouth Market. Both moves extend his reach beyond the butcher-shop format that made his name in the capital.
Macellaio RC's other five sites, four in London and one in Genoa, keep the original meat-by-weight menu. Only the South Kensington original is converting.
The changeover lands in a busy season for Italian openings in London, among them Osteria Panzano in Knightsbridge. For a format Costa built his name on, it is the first time any site has left it behind.
