In conversation with... His London restaurants, Gloria and Circolo Popolare, have caused a sensation in the hospitality industry. That’s in addition to seven trattorias in France and a 50,000 sq ft food market, La Felicità, in Paris. Victor Lugger, with his partner Tigrane Seydoux, is one of the most successful operators on the current restaurant scene. What’s his secret? He tells Lisa Markwell about the significance of everything from lowered floors to heightened expectations In just six years, the French business partners Lugger and Seydoux have created the highly successful portfolio of ‘Big Mamma’ Italian-themed restaurants and show no signs of resting on their laurels. Lugger in particular, who is just 35, moves through the newest opening, Circolo Popolare in Fitrovia, with a sense of urgency – noticing everything from the customer questioning the waiter about his dish to a candelabra that needs adjusting. He has relocated from Paris to London with his wife and two small children – not just to keep an eye on Big Mamma’s newest openings, but because he loves the capital, from its Indian restaurants to swimming in Hampstead ponds. He shares a love of puns and knockabout humour with the
restaurant? You had a successful career already. Actually, the start point was my partner Tigrane Seydoux and I wanting to do something together. We hadn’t worked together before, but we thought we’d try to do something that I like and he likes. We’d look at thousands of ideas and around us there are all these guys, our generation, creating tech companies, creating a new need, giving a new answer to that need… and making shit-loads of money with great success. We couldn’t get that, and by the way we didn’t have a lot of money behind us. We couldn’t find something where we were excited about. In the end we ended up in restaurants because that’s what we were both passionate about. We said, “Let’s make restaurants.
Issue 20 | Autumn 2019 | codehospitality.co.uk
“If you cook good, cheap food, serve it with a smile, in a nice location, it will work all the time, everywhere” Brits, as witnessed on the menu of the restaurants, and cocktail cups based on women’s breasts (jugs, geddit?!). Lugger employs an almostexclusively Italian staff, the better to transport diners to a trattoria atmosphere, but isn’t overly concerned about the impact of the Brexit situation. We sit talking in the courtyard at the back of Circolo Popolare with coffee for an hour, occasionally joined by his adorable young daughter, who is eating inside with the rest of the family. He’ll occasionally talk to a passing waiter, in flawless Italian, of course. As I leave, he asks me to taste a new dish that head chef Salvatore Moscatto is working on, a wedge of fried macaroni cheese. It is indulgent, rich and quite delicious plus, like so much in the Big Mamma universe, a bit over the top. Let’s go back to the beginning, you started Big Mamma in 2013. What made you want to open a
Great. Let’s make restaurants. At least now we know what we’re going to do.” Has your success been built on being the hot new thing? I’ve never bought into that idea about it’s a tough industry or that one minute you’re fashionable and then you’re not. It’s absolute bullshit, I would say. If you cook good, cheap food, serve it with a smile, in a nice location, it works all the time everywhere - whatever food you’re serving, whatever bracket of price you’re in. Like the River Café – it’s been there 20 years. Look at Trullo - it’s consistently good and they could open a second one and a third one next to that, if they were consistent in quality, served with a smile at a proper price in a nice place, it would work. Period. So you decided to open a restaurant. Then what? We said, “Okay. What are we going to cook?” We looked at thousands of ideas and lots of kitchens. We needed experience. We didn’t know
shit about operating a restaurant. I could cook for a dinner at home. I’m actually passionate about it, but I’m not a chef. When I say I’m not a chef, it means ... I can create any of these [Circolo’s] dishes. I participate a lot in many things here, but a chef is about how you do it at this volume with consistency and … not how you do it, but how you empower people around you to do it with volume, consistency, energy, and passion over time. I don’t give a shit about food and the older I get, always less. It’s about the people. It’s about the conviviality. Food fuels a discussion and it’s a way to say I love you. And thank you. To express gratitude. That’s food. I think a lot of people feel this way about restaurants: if the food is okay and the service is great, they’ll go back to that place time and time again. If the food is amazing, but the service and the atmosphere is ... neutral to bad, they’ll never go back because it’s about much more. I couldn’t agree more. You’re young, this is your second career. Do you think you’ll always want to be in restaurants? It’s a tough job. We realised this is really hard – it’s like tackling Everest from the north face. A friend of mine told me, “Being an entrepreneur is taking 100 decisions a day and you have no fucking clue about it.” And that’s where values, I think, are important because I don’t have the time to think it through. Anything you do, you have to be able to do it for 100 years. And so we said, “Okay. What can we do that is sustainable?” Not something that is a good business or it’s a market opportunity. We have to be passionate about it. If not, it’s going to be too hard. That fuelled a second principle which is - everything we do, we try and do as much as possible out of passion. When I say it like that, it sounds like bullshit. Practically, I can give you a few examples that are not bullshit, and they’re proven to be drivers of great success – on the business side and the human side. For instance, internalizing the design studio. You’re a restaurateur and you’re saying, “Now I’m going to do my own design.” It’s the toughest thing I’ve done in two years. It’s a nightmare. It’s really hard. It’s complicated. It’s a totally different
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