Jacqui Pittack founder of. Cinquencento Restaurants talks about her love of interiors and why they are so important to the London dining scene.
The decision to open a pizzeria came to my partner Daniel one night when he became frustrated that he and our business partners the brilliant Emanuele Tagliarina and Carmelo Melo couldn’t find one in London to his liking. We wanted to open a pizzeria that went beyond what London had to offer at the time and really lean into giving an experience that went alongside incredible food.
We wanted our customers to feel that they had been transported to a family run restaurant in Southern Italy, serving Nonna’s secret recipes in her own home. That’s where we coined our DNA: wood, fire, tile. We knew that while the food would play such an important role in our brand, our interiors had to be completed to a certain standard to complete the full experience.
We currently have three neighbourhood Cinquecento restaurants: Chelsea, Notting Hill, and Portobello Road, and we’re about to open our fourth in Haverstock Hill. With each restaurant we have taken a considered approach to its interior. We try to consider what the clientele of each neighbourhood will respond to and acknowledge before working up its own identity within our own DNA. For example: in Chelsea it might look like Nonna’s living room as it is more homely than, say, Portobello, where you see the world-famous market reflected in the mismatch tiling throughout the restaurant.
For our latest project in Haverstock Hill, we know that the clientele will be affluent and well-travelled so we wanted to create an astonishing place where they would feel at home. We’ve taken real care to source fantastic antiques from markets all over Italy, France, and the UK.
I really wanted to make this space feel like an Italian home that had been passed down through generations. The art and fittings are all genre-less, giving the vision that it has passed hands through time, or maybe something has been hung in the same place for the last three families who have lived in the space. Downstairs is a mix of wallpaper and pink marble, which together look great but if you think about it, it could be that a daughter has tried to wallpaper over her mother’s house and perhaps the sister-in-law has reupholstered an armchair. It all fits because it’s family, but there is for sure more than one personality.
This restaurant really is a love letter to our North London fans who now have their own neighbourhood Cinquecento. This is an inviting space where family and friends can sit around for hours, catching up and get together over great food. Whenever we have opened a new space, our customers know that all our ingredients are from Italy. The produce that goes into our food is of a high standard. One piece of feedback we receive consistently is that our customers who have visited Italy feel like they have been transported back.
We’re here to prove that you can experience great food in a beautiful restaurant without breaking the bank. We’re really conscious that everyone in the country is feeling the cost of living crisis but we’re determined to keep the offering at all of our restaurants affordable with a dinner for two coming in at under £40.
We also are now delivering to many parts of London which means people who may not have been able to experience our Pizzas can do so in their own homes.
