Osteria Vibrato’s name nods to Soho’s musical heritage and to its owner’s former life as an opera singer. Anyone who has spent more than a minute in Charlie Mellor’s company will not be surprised to learn that he was a dramatic tenor - the commanding, high-register role often cast as the hero of an opera.
In the great Italian works Mellor adores, it is the tenor who slices through the swell of the orchestra. Today, he does much the same on the restaurant floor. His presence in the dining room of his now closed East London restaurant The Laughing Heart was as integral to its cult following as the cooking or the wine. Now, on the northern end of Greek Street, he is taking centre stage once again.
Osteria Vibrato hits some of the same notes as its Hackney Road predecessor, but it has been carefully tuned for a more mainstream location. Where The Laughing Heart thrived on late-night East London energy, Osteria Vibrato has been designed to chime with everyone from tourists and theatre goers to Soho media types.
“I’ve been proficient at serving a Hackney crowd,” says Mellor. “I’m looking forward to being thrown a few curve balls.”
The food is Italian, leaning heavily into nostalgic dishes some of which would not have looked out of place in the area decades ago. For Mellor, however, the cooking is only one part of the proposition.
“The core offering is the most mind-blowing hospitality in town. That’s what we want to be known for. Everything else is reverse engineered from that,” he says. “It means offering food that makes people happy. I’m a bit over lacto-fermented this and that.”
His enthusiasm for the neighbourhood - long associated with progressive politics and cultural cross-pollination - is infectious. Osteria Vibrato sits just up from the old Pillars of Hercules pub and down from the former site of the Gay Hussar, now home to Noble Rot Soho.
“I like to think about all the pragmatic decisions that have been made here in convivial environments that have brought about real change,” he says.
Pragmatism is also shaping the business. While there’s no such thing as a cheap restaurant in W1, the site is modestly proportioned and required no major works save the installation of a new ventilation system. Osteria Vibrato seats 45 people: 33 in the main restaurant and a dozen in a compact bar to the rear which also has a rail for standing guests.
Mellor - who is backed by two of his regulars from The Laughing Heart - is confident he can sweat his assets and navigate tough times for the sector by serving up to 175 people a day across lunch, pre-theatre and two dinner sittings. “We won’t be pushing people out in 90 minutes, but it’s Greek Street. We’re going to do volume here. If people come at five, they’re not going to want to be here until 8pm.”
A smaller footprint means a leaner team and tighter choreography. “Nobody is going to be standing around. Hopefully we can generate a strong revenue without such a stressful wage bill.”
In another nod to Italy, Mellor is reintroducing the cover charge - coperto - granting access to generous servings of premium olive oils, aged parmesan, freshly baked bread and mineral water.
From opera houses to restaurants
Mellor, who recently turned 40, has worked in hospitality since his teens, qualifying as a sommelier in his native Australia on his 18th birthday. At first, restaurants were a means to an end: he was pursuing a career in opera.
Armed with two master’s degrees in music, he embarked on what he describes as a “short but interesting” period on stage, performing across Australia, Europe and the US, while continuing to work front of house between engagements.
By his mid-twenties, however, the pull of restaurants proved irresistible.
“I liked the idea of walking around inside my own creation and thinking about all the different elements that make a restaurant tick — cashflow, lighting, tasting,” he says. “It’s such a complete art form.”
Determined to build something of his own, Mellor took on management roles at many of the restaurants that defined East London dining in the 2010s including P. Franco and Brawn before launching The Laughing Heart in 2016. Named after a Charles Bukowski poem, it was rightly celebrated for Tom Anglesea’s produce-led cooking, but its success owed just as much to its thoughtful wine list, late-night licence and Mellor’s confident presence on the floor.
The restaurant was hit hard by the pandemic and a pivot to a trattoria format was not enough to save it. Announcing its closure, Mellor wrote that it had ‘fallen victim to these dark times’, adding in characteristically eloquent fashion that ‘almost saving it almost killed me’.
Burnt out, he stepped back and began consulting, helping operators with financial modelling, wine lists and mentoring.
“There’s a lot of stigma attached to the ‘C word’, but I loved it,” he says. “Sometimes you need a reset to become the person you need to become. It’s hard to reinvent yourself in a static space.”
A front-of-house-led operation
One of the biggest lessons Mellor took from closing his first restaurant was that being a sole director can be isolating. This time, he is partnering with Cameron Dewar, whose CV includes The Laughing Heart and Michelin-starred modern Italian restaurant Luca.
“I’m much more confident wading back into the fray with someone I trust who has a complementary skill set,” says Mellor.
Dewar is focused on operations, with Mellor acting as a creative director of sorts. Both are working the floor full time.
“We are a front-of-house-led operation. Chefs have dominated for the past 20 years or so, but prior to that it was all about the gregarious person out front.”
Osteria Vibrato might be being led from the front, so to speak, but it has a strong back of house team too. Mellor’s friend Gaia Enria, founder of the now-closed Shoreditch pasta specialist Burro e Salvia, is consulting on the project, helping with recruitment, recipe development and sense-checking the ‘Italian-ness’ of the offer. Day-to-day oversight sits with head chef Louis Lingwood, whose CV includes Toklas and Quo Vadis.
“Sticking his finger in the sauce”
Mellor, however, is “sticking his finger in the sauce”.
“I’m writing the menus. The Laughing Heart wasn’t an Italian restaurant, but we didn’t print a single menu without a pasta dish on it. I’ve had a love affair with Italy for some time. I just want to serve food that makes people really happy and there’s no other cuisine that does that better in my mind.”
Laid out in the traditional Italian manner, the menu has a pleasingly old-school feel. Dishes are listed in Italian, with their region credited, and follow the classic progression from antipasti to primi, secondi and dolci.
Among the antipasti is crostini topped with bagna cauda - the warm anchovy and garlic dip from Piedmont - and parsley; slices of cotechino sausage served with plum mostarda and turnip purée from Emilia-Romagna; and culatello di Zibello, the prized cured ham of the same region.
Primi include a risotto bianco enriched with 48-month aged Parmigiano Reggiano; mezze maniche pasta alla gricia, the Roman classic of guanciale and pecorino, here paired with artichokes, another staple of Italy’s capital ; and house pasta dishes that underline the kitchen’s northern Italian training.
Secondi options include slip sole with Pantelleria capers; veal Castellana with Valdostana ham; and a house mixed grill. For dessert, there is chocolate sorbet spiked with Moscato grappa and soft amaretti biscuits baked to order.
“What there won’t be is any agnolotti filled with cacio e pepe,” says Mellor. “We’re not doing Britalian or fusion. It’s a respectful London interpretation of Italian food in a trattoria format.”
While sharing is permitted, the intention is that most tables will share antipasti before moving on to their own primi and secondi, as is typical in Italy.
Further down the line, Mellor plans to introduce celebratory dishes available to pre-order.
“We like the idea of working closely with our reservations partner to get in touch a week out and offer people something exciting. It’s not about upselling - it’s about creating a narrative that makes the experience more memorable.”
Like The Laughing Heart, Osteria Vibrato operates a vinyl-only policy, though without DJs. Records are played end-to-end on a high-end sound system, with a nostalgic playlist spanning bossa nova, Italian classics and older hip-hop as the evening progresses.
The compact dining room is a high-end take on a trattoria: white tablecloths, candlelight and a custom terrazzo floor. Rosewood veneer panels line lime-plastered walls and banquettes are upholstered in leather sourced from ex-dairy cows.
Avoiding wine list landmines
The Laughing Heart was a champion of natural, biodynamic and low-intervention wines. Osteria Vibrato has the same policy, but Mellor is aware that Soho is not East London and doesn’t want to scare the horses by majoring on overly funky or challenging bottles.
“I love spontaneously fermented natural wines and it remains an incredibly popular style, but I also feel like some of those wines aren’t suitable for this menu and this audience,” he explains. “We don’t serve anything that tastes dead but if a wine is a bit bonkers it’s going to have to earn its keep. I don’t want to have too many landmines on there for the person that just wants a nice pale rosé.”
With stock stored in a bonded warehouse as well as onsite, it will come as little surprise that the 300-reference list delves deep into Italy, though there is also a strong showing for French wines.
“That’s usually how it is in Italy. Northern Italians are the biggest consumers of champagne in the world, so we’re going to have a sick list of grower champagne by the bottle and a great selection by the glass,” says Mellor, who is also throwing in bottles from his personal cellar.
“That will make up a small contingent, but it does mean we will have some bottles that nobody else has. We want to be like Noble Rot in the early days in that we want people to say, ‘how the heck are you offering that wine at that price in a restaurant?’”
While there will be plenty of special bottles for those looking to splash out, Mellor is keen for the list to feel democratic. That will be achieved by moving to a cash margin further up the list than most restaurants and focusing on making the £60–£100 section the most dynamic and interesting.
“We want to serve wines that are properly settled. I understand the challenges that restaurants have around wine at the moment but it’s still disappointing to see lists with just 2024s and 2025s and to have to pay through the nose for wines that aren’t ready to drink.”
The by-the-glass programme at Osteria Vibrato is fast-moving and doesn’t rely heavily on Coravin, partly because Mellor is uneasy about championing a broadly natural approach and then forcing wines through a needle and drenching them in argon gas. Around 15 bottles are open at any one time, including a few higher-value options.
“I think we will often just pull the cork and say, if we can’t sell six of these, we’re not doing our job very well.”
Jumping in with both feet
There is no doubting that Mellor intends to throw himself into this next act.
“We are absolute monsters on the floor and we will be there,” he says. “We’re going to be in our suits taking care of people. That’s what we want to do.”
If The Laughing Heart was the cult classic, Osteria Vibrato feels more in tempo with the current market: front-of-house-led, accessible and more concerned with pleasure than provocation.
“I could have been first to the party on many things if I’d had the time and money,” Mellor reflects. “At least now I feel like I’m arriving at a moment where I can give people the things they want - things I’ve loved for a long time that are finally being reflected in the market.”