L'Anima Cafe goes the way of sister L'Anima and shuts up shop

An Instagram post by chief food critic at Bloomberg Richard Vines shows a ‘closed’ sign posted on the restaurant’s door, and its website no longer accepts bookings.

The restaurant, which opened in March last year, specialised in Italian cuisine, and offered a more casual style of dining to its big sister L’Anima, which Mazzei opened in 2008 before moving on to work with D&D.

Located around the corner from L’Anima Café, L’Anima, was overseen by Mazzei’s former sous chef and mentee Lello Favuzzi, and closed in February.

At the time of closing, owner Peter Marani cited reasons including rising costs; business rates; and rising wages, saying that the closure had been planned for half a year.

In what the restaurant described as “exciting plans”, some of its staff and menu items were transferred across to little sister L’Anima Café, the plan being to merge both sites into one “fine dining concept” to reduce rent costs.

L’Anima Cafe has not yet made a comment on the closure except to write ‘closed’ on its website homepage.