Osteria Panzano opens: Zuma's Waney goes Italian

Osteria Panzano, a 100-cover Tuscan restaurant from Zuma co-founder Arjun Waney, opens on William Street in Knightsbridge next month, his first Italian project after a career built on Japanese and modern European kitchens. Restaurant Online broke the news on 19 October, reporting that Waney calls it his "last legacy" project.

Waney co-founded Zuma with chef Rainer Becker in 2002 and went on to open COYA, La Petite Maison and The Arts Club. Osteria Panzano is his first restaurant built entirely around Italian cooking, named for a hilltop village in Chianti between Florence and Siena, close to the estate he owns in the region.

Open fire and Waney's own oil

A direct line from his own Tuscan estate to the dining room — something none of his other restaurants have.

The kitchen is led by Paolo Parlanti, a Tuscany-born head chef, cooking over a rotisserie and open grill. Sample dishes reported by Restaurant Online include rotisserie chicken and quail, cacio e pepe with black truffle, yellowfin tuna tartare with avocado and crispy shallots, roast turbot with braised herb potatoes, and whole fish and aged steaks cooked over coals. Tuscan salumi and regional cheeses are served to eat in or take away.

Waney's own tenuta in Tuscany supplies olive oil and sangiovese for the restaurant, a direct line from estate to dining room that he has not used at any of his other restaurants. "Osteria Panzano is my opportunity to celebrate the food, wine and spirit of Tuscany," he told Restaurant Online. "It's about bringing that genuine Tuscan experience to London: warm, generous and full of life."

A Sagrada interior and a Belgravia address

The interiors are by David D'Almada of London studio Sagrada, with a private dining room under a brick-vaulted ceiling, a bar serving cocktails and Italian aperitivo, and an outdoor terrace. Hot Dinners, reporting two days later, places the address on the Belgravia side of William Street rather than Knightsbridge proper — the street sits on the border of both postal districts.

The opening lands the same month Zuma's Ibiza rooftop closed for the season, with the group's Spanish business consolidating in Madrid. Waney is opening a full Tuscan kitchen in London just as his Japanese restaurants wind down their seasonal outposts elsewhere.