- Written by: Chefluencer Editorial Team
The Laughing Heart and Charlie Mellor’s late-night legacy
Mellor’s reputation was built at The Laughing Heart, the Hackney bar and restaurant he opened in 2016. It quickly became a late-night landmark: a dining room and wine bar open until two or three in the morning on several nights a week, with food still coming out when most kitchens had long closed. Critics did not file polite, forgettable notes. The place was described as “drinking food” with big, in-your-face flavours, unapologetic about salt and fat, and as modern European cooking charged with Asian and Chinese inflexions: oysters with shiso and apple, larb-stuffed olives, pig's head and kimchi croquettes, Devon crab and chestnut tart with koji pastry. Reviews of the kitchen run by Tom Anglesea talked about “immaculate cooking”, “one of the best meals of the year”, and “ambitious but pared-down fine-dining fare” hidden inside a wine bar.
The cellar matched that. Wine list ran to many pages, packed with mostly natural and minimal-intervention bottles from Burgundy, Jura, Austria, Greece, California and beyond, often singled out as some of the most interesting wine selections in East London at the time. The room itself – with its cutlery drawers built into the tables and a bottle shop downstairs – was repeatedly described as intimate, smart, and the sort of place locals fantasised about claiming as their regular.
Mellor’s path in hospitality ran alongside that. He trained first as a singer, then as a sommelier at eighteen, and worked across dining rooms like Elliot’s, Brawn, Primeur and P Franco before opening a place of his own. At The Laughing Heart he was present, visible, and obsessed with how the night moved – from the first glass poured to the last plate leaving the pass. When the restaurant closed in 2022, he did not soften the blow with a string of smaller ventures. He disappeared.
His message now is short and unfiltered: “I’m fucking back, baby!” It reads less like a slogan and more like someone flicking the lights on again.
The injection of romance, nostalgia, warmth and generosity
The new site in Soho was in rough condition when he took it on, the kind of space that needs imagination before it needs paint. Mellor has rebuilt it around a clear picture. He asks you to imagine the best trattoria from an Italian holiday – the one with the plate of something perfect that arrived when you had stopped paying attention – then drop that memory onto Greek Street, fold in a “naughty” cocktail bar and a cellar of dusty bottles, and turn the lights down.
He is specific about the details: Murano chandeliers, Diespeker & Co terrazzo floors, rosewood veneer panelling, British Pasture Leather banquettes, cream tablecloths, candlelight. Plus, the audiofile sound system incorporating components from the original Laughing Heart cellar. He talks about “romance, nostalgia, warmth and generosity” not as decoration, but as the working brief. Soho, in his view, is due a revival, and he wants to be in the middle of the carnage and the chaos with something that feels civilised without becoming stiff.
Service sits at the centre of that idea. Mellor promises “the warmest and most performative service in town”, with servers in cream coats whose job is to offer shelter from the daily Sturm und Drang. It is a deliberately old-fashioned ambition: to make the dining room feel like a place to exhale rather than another room demanding attention.
The menu: back to Italian structure
The promise is blunt: “Elegant, restrained cooking with a healthy respect for the traditions of Italian cuisine. Long lunches and cold martinis.” A frame for the menu, which follows a traditional Italian progression, with a focus on pasta, risotto, whole fish, and seasonal cooking.
Mellor is developing it with Gaia Enria, whose work at Burro e Salvia made her a reference point for handmade pasta in London. Together, they are building an Italian structure with precise edges.
- Antipasti: salumi from small Italian producers, fresh mozzarella brought in regularly, and plates that travel the table easily without dissolving into anonymous “small plates”.
- Primi: pasta rolled daily in-house, with flours chosen for texture and bite, plus selected dried durum-wheat pastas and risotto.
- Secondi: whole grilled fish, mixed arrosti, and seasonal dishes built on a short list of components, relying on timing and seasoning rather than tricks.
- Dolci: classic forms tightened rather than deconstructed, including amaretti baked to order and served when they are ready, not when you are in a hurry.
Some dishes will be available only upon request, including brodo di vasto, a seafood stew from Abruzzo that requires time and planning. A fixed-price lunch will run into early evening, giving Soho a version of the working Italian lunch it rarely gets. A modest coperto will fold bread, olive oil, Parmigiano and kitchen snacks into the rhythm of the table.
The Green Room cocktail bar and the wine programme
Behind the main dining space sits The Green Room, a cocktail bar designed as part of the restaurant rather than a bolt-on. It will pour martinis and Negronis, hold back seats for walk-ins, and serve the full menu to people who prefer to eat at a counter or slip in late. In a neighbourhood where spontaneity usually loses to booking systems, that is a deliberate decision.
The wine list, assembled with Cameron Dewar, opens at roughly 250 references. Dewar, a long-time Mellor's collaborator and sommelier, joins the project as co-founder and operational partner, shaping both the wine programme and broader hospitality vision. Mellor trusts his palate, and it shows. The plan is a list built around minimal-intervention, classically made wines — bottles with structure and personality rather than novelties chosen for effect. Some will come from Mellor’s own collection; others reflect long-standing relationships with growers and importers. The point is breadth with logic, not a decorative wall of labels. A broader collection will be cellared off-site and introduced gradually, allowing the list to deepen over time rather than arrive fully formed.
Art will work as part of the environment rather than the background. Mellor is collaborating with Cedric Bardawil on rotating installations that will change the visual temperature of the space in single, decisive hangs. It allows the restaurant to evolve in public view without losing its underlying character.
Why Osteria Vibrato cuts through the London noise
There is no attempt to resurrect The Laughing Heart. Mellor has moved on, and Vibrato reflects that. It reads like the work of someone who has seen what the city has become – loud with ideas, thin on feeling – and wants to offer an alternative grounded in what actually makes a restaurant worth returning to.
If he delivers what he is promising, Osteria Vibrato will not just add another Italian sign to Greek Street. It will give Soho something it has been missing: a place where the first thing you notice is not the concept, but the way the evening feels.
Practicalities:
Osteria Vibrato
Opening: Feb 2026
Address: 6, Greek Street, Soho, W1D 4DE London
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Open: for lunch and dinner (Lunch reservations will be taken for a single sitting, encouraging longer, unhurried meals.)
Availability: Reservations / walk-ins
Photos: Food styling: Grace Jenkins, Photography: Jason Lowe, Art: Cedric Bardawil
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