History of Manzi's

A Soho Legend

We take our name and our playful ethos from the original Manzi’s – an Anglo-Italian seafood restaurant that drew Londoners through its doors from the 1950s through to the turn of the twenty-first century. Diners lingered over its red-and-white checked tables from lunch to dinner and beyond, drawn by relaxed, informal interiors (that happily ignored trends) and the possibility of late night drinks and escapism (aided by a small number of handy hotel rooms upstairs).

The family finally closed the doors of the beloved restaurant in 2006, but the spirit of the original lives on, albeit in a newly invented guise, at our nearby restaurant, sequestered just off Soho Square.

Old Soho

When Manzi’s first opened in the 1950s, Soho was a melting pot of cultures, known for its European grocery stores, jazz bars and drinking dens, which together produced a subversive, creative energy.

A new wave of Italian immigrants had recently introduced Londoners to espresso bars. The area was experimental (the world’s first television was demonstrated in 1926 in a room above Frith Street’s Bar Italia) and its web of streets eventually became fertile ground for Anglo-Italians to bring their cuisine to the capital. Manzi’s produced Mediterranean-inspired fish dishes amid an informal melee of red gingham checked tablecloths and imitation loaves and lobsters suspended over its L-shaped bar. Beloved by Londoners for over half a century, the family-run institution billed itself as ‘London’s Oldest Seafood Restaurant’ and was known for its eclectic clientele: celebrities, locals and curious tourists rubbed shoulders with ease.