London restaurants are currently behaving a little like celebrity marriages: enormous launch, expensive photographs, everyone has an opinion, and sometimes it is all over before you have managed to get a table.
Which makes twelve years on Berkeley Street rather impressive.
Bocconcino Mayfair opened in 2014, long before every second London restaurant required a DJ, a members’ club adjacent reservation policy and an international outpost in Dubai. It has since watched Mayfair become arguably the most competitive dining postcode in Britain, survived the pandemic, the cost of living crisis, the TikTokification of dinner and our collective decision that pasta tastes better when eaten beneath approximately £40,000 worth of lighting.
And it is still here. I went to find out why.
The answer becomes clearer fairly quickly. Bocconcino understands something the restaurant industry occasionally forgets in its pursuit of the new: people quite like knowing they are going to have a good time.
At 19 Berkeley Street, that comes in two distinctly different flavours. Upstairs is the more grown up sibling, all marble, white tablecloths, terracotta, leather and flattering light. It is polished without feeling painfully formal, the sort of room where a business lunch could quite reasonably become a bottle of Barolo and an afternoon mysteriously removed from Outlook.
Then there is downstairs.
A dramatic spiral staircase deposits you into a considerably more extroverted version of Italy, with an open kitchen, wood fired oven, seafood counter, bar and, later in the week, DJs and live music. If upstairs has remembered it has a meeting tomorrow, downstairs has put its phone on Do Not Disturb.
Importantly, the kitchen has enough substance to support both personalities.
Head Chef Marco Corsica is from Naples, but the menu travels further, pulling from Rome, Tuscany, Sicily and Campania rather than reducing Italian food to the familiar greatest hits.
Fresh pasta is made in house every morning and pizza comes blistered from the wood fired oven, but I would resist ordering too conservatively. This is a menu built for the dangerous sentence, “Shall we get a few things for the table?”
We did.
There is crudo, burrata and antipasti before the serious carbohydrates arrive: lobster linguine, wild boar ragù with tagliatelle and ravioli filled with crab or king prawns. Elsewhere, Dover sole can be selected from the fish display, while slow cooked beef short rib with truffled potato and Scottish steaks provide ammunition for anyone inexplicably attempting to avoid pasta in an Italian restaurant.
Some of the best moments happen beside the table. Beef fillet tartare is prepared in front of you, the hand cut meat mixed with egg yolk, Dijon, shallot, chives and truffle oil before fresh black truffle is shaved generously over the top. The Branzino al Sale arrives entombed in salt before being cracked open and expertly filleted.
Tableside theatre has become fashionable again, but there is a difference between service designed for somebody’s camera roll and service performed by people who actually know what they are doing. Bocconcino lands on the right side of it.
The wine list helps enormously.
More than 300 bottles cover Italy with admirable seriousness, moving through Piedmont, Tuscany, Etna, Campania and Sardinia, with Barolo, Barbaresco, Brunello, Amarone and Super Tuscans joined by less obvious indigenous grapes. A substantial by the glass and Coravin selection means you can drink ambitiously without ordering an entire bottle every time you change course.
Although, naturally, nobody is stopping you.
Dessert presents another test of restraint. Tiramisù is joined by vanilla soufflé, pistachio fondant and lemon tart with Italian meringue. I approached this stage with the confidence of somebody who had abandoned sensible decision making several courses earlier.
Bocconcino has also been clever about giving regulars reasons to return. Weekdays bring set lunches, while Saturdays belong to Brunch Esclusivo, with sharing dishes, free flowing drinks and a DJ. Sundays go larger still with Il Grande, an Italian buffet brunch of lobster, mussels, salads and desserts accompanied by live music.
It could all sound like too much. Somehow, it isn’t.
Perhaps that is the advantage of having had twelve years to work out exactly what your restaurant is.
In 2026, Mayfair has no shortage of glossy newcomers, global restaurant imports and dining rooms engineered to become London’s Next Big Thing. Bocconcino has already been the new restaurant. It has done the launches, collected the regulars and watched countless neighbours arrive with enormous fanfare.
Twelve years later, the tables are still full. In Mayfair, that might be the most impressive review of all.
@bocconcinolondon | bocconcinorestaurant.co.uk/mayfair
19 Berkeley St, London, W1J 8ED
