Juno restaurant Olympia to open with 300 pizzas an hour

Juno restaurant Olympia, a 265-cover Italian restaurant from Incipio Group, opens on 16 October inside the Grade II-listed National Hall at London's Olympia.

The space spans more than 11,500 sq ft under five-metre-high ceilings, with capacity to grow to 500 covers once fully operational. Incipio Group, which also runs Sale e Pepe and Mama Locca in London, is staffing the venue with a 50-person team.

The menu leans on classic Italian cooking rather than novelty: tomato and mozzarella paccheri, crab linguine with chilli and vine-ripened cherry tomatoes, and osso buco alla Milanese sit alongside a dedicated Pizza Napoletana counter.

We wanted a restaurant that could work in different ways throughout the day.

A pizza counter built for volume

Three pizza chefs will work the counter, which seats ten guests directly around the oven and is designed to produce up to 300 pizzas an hour once the kitchen is at full pace, according to Incipio Group.

"We wanted to create a restaurant that could work in different ways throughout the day, from an aperitivo or long lunch to dinner and drinks," said Ed Devenport, chief executive of Incipio Group.

The restaurant will open daily from midday to 11pm, with a stage and DJ booth built in for evening events, positioning Juno as much as a venue for private hire as a straightforward dining room.

Betting on Olympia's revival

The opening adds to a run of hospitality investment at Olympia London, the exhibition centre that has spent recent years redeveloping its wider site to include a theatre, hotel and live entertainment venues alongside its trade halls.

Juno joins a growing cluster of large-format restaurants opening across London this year, including Bon Bao's new counter in Soho, as operators bet on volume-driven formats to offset rising costs.

Incipio Group has not disclosed the investment behind the fit-out, but said the National Hall's scale was central to the decision to take the site. Bookings for the opening week are already being taken, with the operator expecting strong demand from both exhibition-goers and local diners once the doors open.