November 21, 2025 |
Before you’ve even tasted a forkful of spicy rigatoni vodka (which you’re sure to keep dreaming about for weeks – I did), Carbone arrives with a reputation – more myth than restaurant, truth be told. Born in Greenwich Village, New York, in 2013 from a devotion to Italian-American red-sauce glamour and the desire to create, as the restaurant’s namesake Mario Carbone likes to say, “a perfect period piece,” it has long stood as cultural shorthand for a certain kind of night – big, cinematic and handsomely lit. Now, that mythology has crossed the Atlantic. Carbone has landed in London, and it is already throwing itself into the festive season. The restaurant will remain open on Christmas Day – a rarity in Mayfair – offering a curated four-course menu that moves from Caesar alla ZZ and lobster burrata to that famous spicy rigatoni vodka, Dover sole, rib chop and a panettone anglaise with the soft glow of a holiday flourish. New Year’s Eve will come with its own celebratory menus too, followed by New Year’s Day service from 2pm-10pm.
When I met Mario Carbone and Jeff Zalaznick – co-founders and longtime friends – a few weeks before the official opening, the dining room was empty – a charged quiet, like a curtain about to lift. They had only just moved to London. Literally. “We got here this week. This week is our first week of our residency,” Mario said. Yet the move felt inevitable. “There was never a wrong time,” he told me. “London’s always been a dream for us… If you would’ve asked us 10 plus years ago… ‘where do you hope to do it next?’ We would have told you, ‘probably London’.”
There is something tender in the way they speak about cities. They don’t expand into markets – they fall for places. “You gotta love going to these places,” Mario said. “As soon as that love wears off, then it affects the product.” Mayfair was always destined to be the London home. But then came patience. “You’re only going to open one Carbone in Mayfair,” Mario explained. “You need to find the right place, the right partners, and that takes time.” When the perfect space appeared – grand, atmospheric, with the bones for Carbone’s velvet swagger – they knew. “We couldn’t have imagined that we would have found a better place,” he said.
photography by Douglas Friedman
Carbone’s origin story is distinctly New York. Mario grew up in Queens, shaped by the Italian-American haunts that set his imagination alight long before culinary school. “I was modelling myself after the chefs that I envied growing up,” he said. Jeff, meanwhile, began – tragically, in his words – as an investment banker. “I disliked it so much that it actually thrust me into the hospitality business,” he said. “There was no way that I would ever be great at anything that didn’t have to do with food.” Their partnership was forged over late nights at Mario’s first restaurant: “Late nights, late drinks… divulging our hopes and dreams for the future,” Mario recalled. “We quickly realised that those two things were nearly identical.”
The London dining room marries New York swagger with English polish – deep hues, weighty textures, flashes of contemporary art. “We never wanted to create carbon copies,” Jeff said. “If you come to Carbone London, it looks very different [from Carbone New York for example]… but always tying back to core Carbone principles.” Mario added, “If you know Carbone, and you come here, you’re like, ‘oh, this feels like Carbone’, but it’s also new… This is the London one.”
Menus at Carbone famously don’t change much – by design. “The menu never changes,” Jeff said. Mario clarified, “It changes lightly… It’s a 90/10.” Guests don’t come seeking reinvention. They come seeking Carbone – especially that spicy rigatoni vodka, its unofficial anthem. Did they know it would be a hit? “I think it’s hard to know that,” Mario said. “An artist doesn’t make a song knowing it will become their hit song… you just know that you have something that’s really great.”
The service, too, is a performance. Captains (waitors) glide between tables with the confidence of people who’ve seen everything twice. “People, as restaurateurs, are supposed to serve you and give you what you want… not give you what we want,” Jeff said. Mario added that the captains’ authority is central: “This guy’s got it covered.”
photography by Nico Schinco
By the time I visited for a meal – a Thursday evening, warm with that pre-weekend hum – the mythology met the moment. Bread arrived alongside cauliflower doused in lime and chilli and slices of salami. My guest and I shared everything, because at Carbone, restraint feels almost ungracious. We began with the Caesar alla ZZ and the Calamari Marco, followed by an off-menu burrata crowned with caviar – a silken, deeply indulgent moment.
The mains escalated the theatre. Spicy rigatoni vodka (of course) with its signature swagger, lobster ravioli with a certain sea-faring elegance, then an off-menu fettuccini finished with fresh truffle shaved straight into the bowl in front of us, the aroma curling upwards like a cue to applaud. Dessert came aflame. The Neapolitan cherry flambé was lit and tended with deft ceremony by our captain, followed by a carrot cake that grounded the whole affair in something quietly nostalgic.
The captain was lively – an orchestrator, really – and the sommelier spoke about wine with the quiet intelligence of someone who judges a table in three seconds flat.
What do Mario and Jeff want Londoners to feel? Jeff didn’t hesitate: “That they had a great time… that they want to come back.” In a city addicted to openings, Carbone isn’t chasing buzz. It’s courting loyalty – and if history is any clue, loyalty is precisely what it will get. After all, good martinis, velvet banquettes and pasta with the swagger of a hit song travel extraordinarily well.
Photography courtesy of Carbone.
Jeff Zalaznick and Mario Carbone at Carbone London. Photography by Sofi Adams
