Nonna Bakery opens second London site in Covent Garden
The Shanghai-born Italian bakery, founded by a Sicilian lawyer and a Holborn GP, follows its first London opening with a bigger bet on Drury Lane.
Nonna Bakery has opened its second London site, on Drury Lane in Covent Garden, seven months after its debut bakery in Holborn. The artisanal Italian bakery sells cornetti, ricotta cannoli, focaccia, regional breads and classic Italian desserts, plus two items exclusive to the London menu.
The brand started in 2022 in Shanghai's Former French Concession and now runs 15 locations across China. It was founded by Matteo Cicero, a Sicilian lawyer living in Shanghai, and Dr Jonathan Hazon, a GP who has served the Holborn and Covent Garden area for more than 16 years. The pair met on the Sicilian island of Salina and shared a goal of bringing authentic Italian baking to London.
Cicero has said the idea began with homesickness: after moving to Shanghai, he couldn't find the bread he grew up eating, so he started baking it himself. That instinct now anchors a bakery chain spanning two continents.
Covent Garden was always where we imagined the bakery would be.
An Eton mess bun for Covent Garden
The Covent Garden menu keeps the Holborn staples; cornetti filled with pistachio cream, chocolate or seasonal custard, plus ricotta cannoli, alongside two additions made for the new site. One is an Eton mess maritozzo, a Roman sweet bun filled with cream, strawberries and meringue. The other is a pane cunzatu, a Sicilian sandwich built on the bakery's own bread.
Hazon said the location had been the plan from the start: "Covent Garden was always where we imagined the bakery would be." Cicero put the brand's origin more simply: "Nonna began because I simply couldn't find the bread I grew up eating after moving to Shanghai."
Bread and pizza keep finding backers
The opening lands in a part of London already dense with Italian bakers and pizzerias, including Lenny's apizza, which found a permanent Covent Garden home nearby. It also follows a separate deal that secured Bread Ahead's future at Borough Market, another sign that London's appetite for serious bread shows no sign of slowing.
Nonna has given no word yet on further UK sites, but a bakery that grew from one shop in Shanghai to 15 locations in six years is unlikely to stop at two in London.
