SPAGHETTI HOUSE

Spaghetti House prides itself on offering great Italian food to everyone, whether a visitor to the capital, a local down the street or a guest that has been visiting our ‘house’ since we opened. Our ‘passione’ for service, comfort, food and value-for-money keeps our guests coming back for more. That’s what you are to us ‘our guest’ – see you soon! Set up by friends, Simone Lavarini and Lorenzo Fraquelli, Spaghetti House has been part of London since 1955 serving mouthwatering Italian food to generations of Londoners and visitors. Today Spaghetti House is still very much a family business with the 2nd generation of Lavarini’s at the helm.

The group's history goes back to 1955, when two talented Northern Italians - Lorenzo Fraquelli and Simone Lavarini - opened their first, now famous, Spaghetti House in London's Goodge Street. It was the culmination of a seven-year dream for Lorenzo and Simone, who had first met at Bar Italia in London’s Soho in 1948. In the ensuing years, Lorenzo worked at the original Quaglino's in London and Simone in Lausanne, Switzerland, where he qualified as Maître d'H in 1950. Simone then returned to London and secured a position at the Savoy Hotel. The two friends eagerly explored the restaurant scene, carefully noting how the market was diversifying and excitedly sharing a vision and a will to recreate the essence of a true Italian restaurant outside their home country: providing high quality, reasonably priced food and wine to Londoners. A junior partnership in Jermyn Street's Mocaris, a West End Caffé Espresso Bar, led to the friends branching off in 1953 on their first joint venture, the Bamboo Bar in Golders Green, North London's first coffee house. It proved a stepping stone which ultimately led them to Goodge Street, and the opening of London's first-ever Spaghetti House on the ground floor of the building (the idea of inviting people to a 'house' rather than to a 'restaurant' reflected the warm, traditional Italian welcome). Spaghetti House's motto, which still holds good today, was a simple one - 'spaghetti, but not on toast!'