I have to admit, the first time I heard another glossy international restaurant group was dropping into the old War Office I rolled my eyes a touch. Another import, another bit of marble and mood lighting pretending to be special. Then I remembered what Langosteria actually does with seafood and my appetite overruled the cynicism.
The Milan outfit that started life on Via Savona back in 2007 has finally opened its first British outpost at Raffles London at The OWO in Whitehall. Doors swung wide on 1 July this year, slipping neatly into the grand old building that once housed secrets of state and now serves rather more pleasurable ones. You enter on Whitehall Place, the address a crisp 57 Whitehall, SW1A 2BX, and immediately sense the place knows exactly what it is.
They are running evening service for now, opening at five and keeping the kitchen lit from half past until eleven or one in the morning depending on the week. Mondays and, after the initial honeymoon, Sundays are dark. Sensible. Even the most devoted appetites need a night off.
The rooms that remember
What sets this Langosteria apart is the setting. There is the circular bar for those who fancy a sharp aperitivo before committing, the main dining room for the full performance, and then the Historical Room. The latter keeps original architectural details from the Old War Office days, a quiet reminder that pleasure and power have always shared postcodes in this city. You sit beneath cornices that once watched generals plan campaigns and now watch plates of Sicilian langoustines arrive with the quiet confidence of something that knows it will not be sent back.
The menu reads like a love letter to Italian seafood tradition while quietly nodding at the wider world. Red tuna carpaccio, blue lobster pasta, the inevitable yet always welcome plateau royale from the oyster bar, black grouper cooked chateaubriand style, and a tiramisu that refuses to be reimagined into something silly. Ingredients are chased from wherever they are best, a global net cast for the highest quality, then treated with the restraint that marks proper Italian cooking. No foams, no fuss, just fish that tastes unmistakably of itself.
London has always been good at welcoming these established names, and their arrival does more than fill another reservation book. It reminds us that classic European ways with food, the respect for raw materials, the understanding that simplicity done properly is the hardest trick of all, still speak directly to British tastes. We have our own deep history with seafood after all. This feels less like colonisation and more like a particularly well-mannered exchange of gifts between old friends.
