THE CURATED EDITION.
Reportage / London
Half a century after Sale e Pepe first set London’s tables, its seafood chapter moves into The Langham: Riviera cooking, a Josper grill and trolleys that still roll to the table.
DINING
Some restaurants open. Others simply change rooms and carry fifty years with them.
Sale e Pepe has been part of London’s dining life since 1974, a name associated with Knightsbridge, long lunches and a particular kind of Italian hospitality. Its seafood chapter, Sale e Pepe Mare, now sits inside The Langham on Portland Place, the address the hotel likes to call Europe’s first grand hotel. The move is less a reinvention than a change of light: the same instinct for service, turned towards the sea.
Wood panelling, a marble bar and textured seating set a register that is warm rather than theatrical. The day’s fish is on display, and the trolleys do the rest: a Negroni and Champagne trolley at the start of the evening, a dessert trolley at the end, with tiramisu finished at the table. It is restaurant service in the old sense, where the waiter’s hands are part of the menu.
The sea is not a theme here. It is the shopping list.
The menu looks to the Amalfi Coast and the Italian Riviera. Baked scallops with chilli, lemon and parsley; crab with avocado and datterino tomatoes; linguine with clams and bottarga; riso alla pescatora, baked with squid, clams, prawns and sea bass. The Josper grill handles whole fish and, for those who came for land rather than sea, lamb chops, a butcher’s Wagyu steak and the house Milanese.
The wine list stays in Italy, region by region. A private dining room seats up to eighteen, which suits the kind of lunch that was always the Sale e Pepe speciality: long, loud in the right way, and in no hurry to end.
Lunch runs daily from noon. In the evening the kitchen serves à la carte until eleven from Monday to Saturday, and the bar keeps the room open well past it. Late, with a plate of crudo and the trolley within reach, is when the place makes most sense.
Fifty years is a long time to keep a dining room’s promise. Sale e Pepe kept it by changing the address and not the manners: the fish on display, the trolley at the table, and a waiter who still knows that the evening is the real dish.
Details and further reading: Sale e Pepe Mare, The Langham, 1C Portland Place, London W1B 1JA · Sale e Pepe Mare, menus and reservations · The Langham, London
Instagram: @saleepepemare
GABRIEL SILVEIRADO, FOR WAYFARER.
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