Charlie Mellor is almost back in business. The sommelier, restaurateur and former operatic tenor – best known for The Laughing Heart on Hackney Road, which closed in 2022 – is collaborating with sommelier Cameron Dewar (Luca, Burnt Ends) to open Osteria Vibrato, a 33-seat Italian restaurant on Greek Street.
According to Mellor, the project is the result of a long creative reawakening. “I feel like I’m coming out of a little period of hibernation,” he tells Broadsheet. “I’ve been thinking about what I think the industry really needs at the moment … I want to bottle as much of the warmth and generosity of hospitality as possible, and bring nostalgia and familiarity back to the dining scene.”
The menu, which is created with Gaia Enria, the founder of Shoreditch’s recently closed Burro e Salvia, will return to the traditional Italian structure Mellor thinks London has drifted away from: antipasti, primi, secondi and dolci. An affordable set menu will be available at lunch, while diners will pay a £3 coperto – an Italian custom that here covers bread, olive oil, aged parmesan, scarti di cucina (“kitchen scraps”) and a “bespoke formulated mineral water” – every sitting.
Pasta will be rolled by hand, though Mellor is equally focused on reviving artisanal dried durum-wheat pasta, with the makers’ names proudly displayed on the menu. “When you’re having something with fish or just two ingredients, what you want is that proper al dente bite.” Risotto will be made to order by a dedicated cook. “It’s apparently a pain in the ass, but it’s worth it,” Mellor says.
There’ll also be pre-order dishes that require days of preparation, designed to conjure a sense of occasion (“If you book – and you probably will have to – why not get excited before you arrive?”).
The restaurant will open in the former home of Cinquecento, at the northern end of Greek Street, and its name is a nod to Mellor’s past life as an opera singer. And he’s fully aware the sign might raise a few eyebrows. “People are going to look at it and think ‘vibrator’ – which is kind of fitting for the neighbourhood,” he laughs.
Central to the Osteria Vibrato concept is an art display that will change regularly. “I’ve been engineering the space from a place of how the art can really be showcased,” Mellor says. The for-purchase art programme comes via his friend Cedric Bardawil, who represents what Mellor calls “the hottest and most interesting young painters in town”. The entire collection will rotate at once, periodically “reimagining” the room. “It’s a fun thing,” he says. “An opportunity to provide editorial commentary on the artists rather than reductive pictures of a drink or a dish.”
The walls will be lime-washed in a cream tone to act as a neutral backdrop; below that, the room will be clad in rosewood joinery. Banquettes upholstered in a custom rust-red British Pasture Leather will wrap around parts of the dining room. “It’s more old Soho than Italian,” says Mellor. Meanwhile, the floor is a custom terrazzo – cool grey with brown and black flecks. Mellor wants the overall effect to feel slightly ambiguous in time. “I’d love it if people walked in wondering when the hell this place had been made … like someone with incredible taste had built it over a long period of time.”
Predictably, wine will be a major part of the experience. Though Mellor says the list will be a relatively modest one of around 250 to 300 bottles. “I can write an amazing wine list,” he says, “but I don’t want another London list where everything’s less than three years old and marked up to the wazoo.” Expect older vintages and bottles gathered from brokers, old friends and Mellor and Dewar’s own cellars. “Anybody who loves wine should walk in and go: wow, these guys have really thought about this.”
Despite his hiatus the metric that matters hasn’t changed for Mellor. “For me, the measure of success is how many times someone has proposed in your restaurant,” he says. “If people feel safe to bring their loved ones and celebrate special moments – you’re nailing it.”
Osteria Vibrato opens on 6 Greek Street, Soho in early 2026.
