Our Soho story

Vasco Matteucci and Piero Orazietti took over a neglected Hungarian tearoom on the top floor of the Academy Cinema on Oxford Street and turned it into an Umbrian restaurant. They kept its name — and its unusual, tent-like interior, designed by the surrealist photographer Angus McBean.

At the time Umbrian food was still regarded with a certain disdain, and native Italian chefs were hard to find. But the eye-catching décor, the warm welcoming atmosphere and the food led to a series of glowing reviews, including an enthusiastic piece in Time Out and a place in the 1974 Good Food guides.

The Academy crowd made the place their own. The nights were long and lucrative: the head chef would come out in his whites and sing until four in the morning, the whole room clapping and singing along. People would hand Vasco their wallets and tell him to take whatever he wanted.

This was the era when the Stranglers turned up and found themselves next to the Kinks, Siouxsie and the Banshees partied till late, and the Pythons could be seen in their twenties writing their scripts.

As Soho changed around us, the Pavilion filled with executives from Sony, Channel 4 and the newly booming media houses, becoming a favourite lunchtime retreat in the heart of the West End.

When the Academy Cinema closed in 1986 we remained defiantly open — reached only through a passageway of surreal blue mosaics off Poland Street. In 1989 we moved to 15 Poland Street, carrying McBean's pineapple-topped screens, wall decorations and the large wrought-iron screen, which can still be seen in the restaurant today.

The Pavilion became a home for theatregoers, cartoonists and the leading lights of New Labour — Gordon Brown among the regulars. In 1994 John Walsh of the Independent called us an "Umbrian paradise in the heart of Soho."

Through it all the food stayed simple: two or three ingredients, done properly. That same year we added a £1 optional donation to the bill for the newly founded StreetSmart initiative, helping the homeless — something our customers took to warmly.

A new generation found us — media crews at lunch, theatre crowds at night, and guests from every corner of the world. Square Meal praised our "exceptional value" and the sophistication of the new white interior.

This was the decade the internet reached the table. One of our regulars, Martha Lane Fox, had started lastminute.com, and we soon had our first online booking system — though at first we had the confirmations sent by fax, wary of the new technology.

Diners wanted to share, so we rebuilt the menu as a list of dishes of every size — a hit with our Japanese and Chinese regulars, who always ordered many plates between them. In 2015 the restaurant was redecorated, with fixtures and paintings brought over from Umbria.

Our basic philosophy never moved: simple food, three or four ingredients in each dish, Umbrian at heart.

In October 2021 we moved to 11 D'Arblay Street.

The surroundings changed, but the Pavilion did not: Italian design, Umbrian art, familiar hospitality and the same belief in simple food.

Across the years, the Pavilion has appeared in the Guardian, Financial Times, Time Out, Observer, Evening Standard, SquareMeal, Harden's and other guides and publications. It has been described as a Soho stalwart, praised for its simple Umbrian cooking and recognised for remaining true to itself while Soho changed around it. The press cuttings form part of the restaurant's history - not a separate story, but a record of more than five decades at the table.