The kaleidoscope of multicolored lights along Shaftesbury Avenue in London, the street leading from Piccadilly Circus, are the closest thing to Las Vegas in old Europe. A myriad of neon signs, electrified signs, clubs, restaurants, for all tastes and all wallets. It is the heart of the West End, the Theater District, the theater and musical district. Even with the restrictions, crowds fill the sidewalks at all times the sidewalks. Theater also means eating: the agent goes out or enters the shows hungry. And next to the theaters, in the famous street there is perhaps the highest concentration of clubs in London. Among the blinding lights, there is a riot of fake Italians: at Zizzi, who prides himself on being “Individually Italian” (whatever that means); at Bella Italia, all foreign chains that try to imitate Italian cuisine. Among the many, far too many, fake-Italian shop windows, including a Caffè Concerto, an unlikely tricolor pastry shop; and a Bella Italia, another Italian-dressed foreign chain, that of “Macellaio Soho” is authentic: a true Italian restaurant, serving strictly Italian meat. Inside, between verse leather armchairs and wooden paneling on the walls reminiscent of Keen’s, a historic steak house in New York, Roberto Costa sits relaxed and plump at a table in his restaurant. He wears a nice and minimalist blue sweatshirt, with the words “DAD” (dad), goggles with flashy frames, beard: the look is hipster, but the small tattoos on his fingers betray origins at the antipodes: the Genoa of the port. The appetizer with which he begins to tell his story is called “The Beauty & The Best”, hot bone marrow paired with fin de claire oysters, an original combination that would look good in front of the creations of chef stars of the caliber of Carlo Cracco or Massimo Bottura. The place is full: it wasn’t like that two years ago, or even last January. Just as the Apocalypse loomed over London, and in the West End clubs closed forever, Costa followed the famous maxim of Baron Rothschild: “When the blood flows in the streets it’s time to buy“. While everyone was running away, out of fear, he bought the place where he now tells his story: “They took me for crazy: opening a restaurant in the middle of the pandemic, a demanding investment, the biggest place I have ever bought and also with a history of failures behind “. Outside looms the blue billboard, which occupies the entire facade of the building, of “Les Miserables”, the musical based on the novel by the French writer Victor Hugo. It is one of the musicals that has been staged in London for 30 years (it is the longest running show together with Agata Christie’s Mouse Trap), but for some strange reason, the restaurant housed there never worked. Perhaps the time has come to disprove the story.
Having landed in London in 2012, the year of the Olympics, “without knowing how to speak a word of English”, but with a lot of background and the age-old habit of a land accustomed to sacrifices and difficulties, Costa is today the “king” of restaurateurs in London, the new rising star. For years Giorgio Locatelli was the undisputed Sovereign of Italian fine dining in Mayfair (and in some ways it continues to be): his Locanda, where Prince Charles, Chris Martin of Coldplay or Madonna meet when they are in London, made school. Costa is less glamorous, but more concrete: his RC Group has opened 6 restaurants in the capital, all “Macellaio”, and a shop of Italian goodness, with a small secret restaurant hidden by a refrigerator, called CasaCosta.
When asked whether he feels more like a chef or an entrepreneur, he is unsettling: “Neither one, nor the other: I’m a waiter”. Because that’s written in the story of him. “I only did the Third Media – he admits without problems – I did everything without an education. I feel like a self-made man, but I also feel that I lack a school basis “. At 15, his mother imposed the classic Aut-Aut of post-war Italy on him: “Either go to school or go to work”. And the job is the family restaurant. It seems the umpteenth story of the many Italian self-made men, but unlike many compatriots who, in accordance with the motto Nemo Proheta in Patria, explode abroad, starting from strangers, Costa was already “someone” when he arrived on the Thames. He had set up a lucky number of meat restaurants, starting from Genoa, called “Magelà”: 12 places throughout Italy, which were then closed. Roberto comes from a very modest family: “My father was a docker; my mom was a housewife “. It is the working class: “We lived in 4 in 50 square meters but we were happy”. After spending a lifetime at the port, in 1990, the year of the World Cup in Italy, Costa senior decides to use the liquidation to open a restaurant “I Dui Fre”, the two brothers. The Costa family feed the working class to use an expression that the then adolescent Roberto does not yet know: a fixed price of 10 thousand lire, “it was the classic popular Sciuta or Minestrun menu”, pasta or minestrone. The young man suffers: “I was ashamed to death to go to service in the dining room, with the picagetta, the placemat, on my shoulder”. Now, however, the room is his natural habitat.
As always, life is made up of encounters and junctions that mark the roads: for Costa the junction, the first of many, is called Luca Collami, the chef of the first starred restaurant in Genoa. “He invites me in the summer to an estate in Tuscany: at the sight of a buggy set up in a cottage, among the cypresses, I am electrocuted. I understand that I want to be a waiter for life ”. In hindsight, sitting at the table of his most recent child, he realizes that his real fortune was “having understood early on what to do in life: many young people today reach their 30s before finding a way. I took it at 17 “. 1992 is the fateful year of Italy and also of the young Costa: the family sells the trattoria and opens its first restaurant in the center together with his brother. In Genoa, nothing is ever easy: moreover, a few months after the inauguration, while in Milan a gentleman unknown to Roberto throws millions of lire into the toilet, Tangentopoli breaks out. Italy is sinking between corruption and mafia massacres: the restaurant is bad. “At 19 I find myself full of bills, more than is fair for a young man of that age”. The brother leaves Genoa for France. When he comes back they get back into business together: they launch the first bistro in town, “Pagura Bernarda”. It is a resounding success, also because it becomes the meeting place for Sampdoria and Genoa players: “Despite the boom, we were always in the bill; we did not have accounting or accounting skills, nor did we have business management skills. We lived on cash at the end of the evening, day by day, but in this way the debts went up and the credits were zeroed ”. Football gives another turning point: in 2001 the king of nightlife in Genoa, Cosimo de Mercurio, who passed away two years ago, introduces Roberto to the oilman Alessandro Garrone who together with his brother at the time were the patrons of Sampdoria and the owners of Erg: they finance the idea of the butcher-restaurant, the “Maxelà”. “It is a partnership that continues to this day: Butcher in London was born thanks to Alessandro”. The “Butcher” Costa took the entrepreneurial spirit from his father who could have simply enjoyed his retirement and allowed himself some ease with liquidation, instead of investing his life savings to open a risky business. As he talks, he stops: “Can we stop the interview? I have to go say hello to the person who is entering ”he apologizes. He greets a short white-haired gentleman who speaks with a very pure British accent. When he sits down he explains that the one just seated is Sir Cameron Mackintosh. The baronet, who oozes the typical English understatement, is the master of the whole theater (and also of the Costa club) as well as of many other properties in the West End: already in 1990, when the Costa family took its first steps in catering, Mackintosh he was one of the greatest entrepreneurs in the West End and one of the richest men in London. “I negotiated the purchase of the place for 7 months,” Costa recalls when he returns to the table: just sitting down to negotiate with the British establishment was a consecration. But that’s not to say that London wasn’t an uphill walk either: when he arrived, the idea was that there would only be enough time to get the club going. And instead he has never gone away. The restaurant was run only by English staff: “They were lacking in the kitchen and even worse in the dining room. I didn’t speak English and they didn’t understand. I looked like Charlie Chaplin ”. Costa fires everyone: “They were almost happy. I made him tenderness. They thought I would close in a few months ”. Once again, he starts from scratch, but this time with a managerial approach: he makes a business plan and calculates that he must invoice at least 800 thousand pounds in the first year, to stay afloat. “I worked 7 days a week, from morning to night, I lived in the club. In the morning I raised the shutters and hoped that the customers would enter. I no longer had budget money ”. To buy the place and hire the staff, Costa is left with just £ 256 in the bank. Twenty years have passed, but it is as if it were always the eternal 1992. It is not known whether Costa is a believer, but on Easter Sunday 2013 a miracle happens. “I remember it like it was yesterday. They call me on the phone and say: Have you seen the Guardian? ” In the most widely read newspaper of London’s upper class, the famous and mysterious (because no one has ever seen her face) Marina O’Loughlin, the most influential food journalist in England, wrote an enthusiastic review of Macellaio Kensington. Costa is sold out: instead of the 800 thousand pounds, which seemed an impossible goal, the first year ends with receipts of 1 million and 200 thousand pounds. “Do you know why pesto was born? Because garlic is a natural food disinfectant. We have to go to the roots of things, especially in the kitchen “. And the “genoan fugitive” went there: after the original appetizer, a fine Fassona meat arrives. Costa made sophisticated Londoners fall in love with Piedmontese meat: another bet that many considered crazy. “Everyone says it’s the fat that gives meat flavor. And in fact the most prized meat in the world primacy is the very fat Wagyu of Japan ”she explains as she bites into the rib, washed down with Nero di Rosso, the wine produced by the DSL patron, Renzo Rosso. “Fassona meat is the leanest in the world. It is very good and Londoners are crazy about it “. From the green velvet armchairs of the Macellaio, the refined lunch ends with a suggestion to the town: “Let Italy rejuvenate. It is not possible that to be credible and listened to, you have to be 50 years old ”.