We’ve written a few times about Donna Margherita, at 183 Lavender Hill – one of our longest serving Neapolitan restaurants with two decades on Lavender Hill. Donna Margherita’s owner Gabriele Vitale moved to London from Italy about 30 years ago. He lived in Kilburn for 12 years , at first working as a waiter and sales rep selling coffee machines. But he felt something just wasn’t right – he was missing food from home – especially the pizza that his hometown of Naples is famed for. He found there was no shortage of trattorias and pizzerias, but they lacked a certain Italian authenticity! He concluded that if he couldn’t be a satisfied customer elsewhere, maybe he should start one himself. This was how he came to set up his own restaurant, Donna Margherita, in Lavender Hill in 2023, supported by his pizza chef Ayrton, and of course a proper wood burning oven.

Named after Queen Margherita – who gave her name to the Pizza Margherita, after she sampled three pizzas in Naples and declared it her favourite – Gabriele focussed on doing traditional pizza well, as well as a wide range of pasta dishes (Gabrielle’s favourite was the Spaghetti Vongole , a Venetian white wine clam pasta that started life as peasant food and became an Italian classic). The business was an immediate success, becoming a firm favourite with locals, with good reviews in Time Out helping to spread the word further afield about this Battersea business.

Gabriele and his team of eight weren’t averse to a bit of experimentation though – for example switching from pizza dough made of the most widely used ’00’ flour, which is a very finely sifted one, to a coarser ‘type 1’ flour that is sifted less, so as to retain more of the original bran and wheat germ. The restaurant also started to develop a wider gluten-free menu.

Everything was going well. They made it through the nightmare of the Coronavirus – opening a delicatessen along the way to serve the takeaway trade, with a wide range of Italian produce. But as the Coronavirus faded and they reverted to being a restaurant disaster struck – with a major fire in the kitchen in April 2021 causing quite substantial damage and leading to immediate closure. Undaunted, and following the usual insurance uncertainty, the owners set about to create something brighter and fresher than what had gone before, with a new look – including bringing light in to the back of the restaurant area, a curved new feature ceiling in sky blue, and a crisper, simpler overall design – while of course keeping the all-important pizza oven at the back of the space.

Things were actually coming on pretty well, to the extent that by September 2021, five months after the fore, we could start seeing what Donna Margherita 2.0 was going to look like; and the builders we spoke to were proud of the way things had progressed. Donna Margherita’s Instagram was clearly showing the enthusiasm too:  “Ciao Amici! We’re still full-on working hard on our Donna Margherita 2.0, works are proceeding great but unfortunately, it might take a few more months before we can safely open our doors.We appreciate every single one of you reaching out and we hope to see you as soon as we open! This is the longest break we took in over 20 years and it will probably be the longest one we’ll take ever, we love our job and making you smile with our food!“.

But progress was slow, with lengthy pauses. The first time everything stopped we hoped it was just a case of struggling to find people to do the finishing touches in a very tight market in the building trades. But weeks turned in to months, and we were unable to detect any signs of activity, or contact anyone involved. Back in May this year, over a year after the fire, our post “Donna Margherita: Is this goodbye?” got a fair bit of attention, and if nothing else it showed that there is strong loyalty to a proper neighbourhood restaurant that has been with us for so long. There were clearly still people hoping that the restaurant could return – but the site remained as in the photo above for many more months. Extended closure is a dangerous place to be for any business, with business rates to pay but no income, no matter how understanding the insurers are, and amid the silence many started to wonder if it was all over for Donna Margherita.

Some time later we reported that work had resumed, and the restaurant was finally finished. Our photo above shows new fridges and delicatessen at the right hand side of the premises, electrics fully finished, the floor polished, seating in place and pictures up on the wall. It had been quite a journey for what the owners initially hoped would be an eight week renovation – but finally Donna Margherita coudl get back to what it could do best, serving good food in a good atmosphere. But in a story that had already had a few twists and turns, yet more bad news: just when the restaurant was ready to reopen, notices from ‘Dukes Bailiffs’ have appeared on the door confirming that the premises has been repossessed by the landlord, presumably on the grounds of unpaid rent.

We’re not sure what precisely went wrong, although we’d hazard a guess that it took a lot longer to rebuilt and refurbish the premises after the April 2021 fire than anyone expected, and the insurance money wasn’t sufficient to cover all the rent and costs being stacked up during the works. These things happen – we understand that the renovation threw up all sorts of headaches, as is often the case in older buildings – and no-one could really have foreseen how long it would have taken to get things up and running again. Many of the running costs keep on costing even when a business isn’t trading, and there are maybe echoes of the similar recent eviction at China Garden where overrunning building works seem to have led to the collapse of the business. But it’s a rather cruel end to Gabriele’s restaurant after two decades of trading, especially after he’d battled through the Coronavirus, and a near-complete rebuild of the premises, to the point of being right on the brink of reopening. Some lucky new tenant may be able to trade in a freshly refitted restaurant with a brand-new pizza oven. But for Gabriele, we can only really express our sympathy, and hope he’s able to find a way forward.