Bancone opens first hotel location at Bloomsbury’s Imperial hotel

Bancone is moving into the Imperial on Russell Square with a 140-cover dining room and a 60-seat outdoor terrace, making Bloomsbury the pasta chain’s first hotel address. The opening, planned for early August 2026, places the brand inside the Imperial’s 357-room refurbishment and gives it a much larger stage than most central London pasta bars.

That shift matters because Bancone has built its name on a format that feels polished without turning dinner into a ritual. The group started in Covent Garden in 2018, added Golden Square in Soho the next year, and later expanded to Borough Yards, Kensington High Street and City. Its website currently lists five London locations, with the City site at 7 Princes Street still marked as opening in spring 2026, so Bloomsbury becomes the next clear step in a run that has stayed tightly focused on central London.

The new room will keep the open pasta kitchen that has become part of Bancone’s identity, letting diners watch the fresh pasta being made by hand every day. The menu is set to lean on the dishes that made the chain a draw in the first place, including bucatini cacio e pepe, silk handkerchiefs with walnut butter and confit egg yolk, spicy pork and nduja ragù, and hogget pappardelle with soy, Thai basil and chilli. Bancone’s own description of its restaurants as “buzzy and informal” fits that formula, along with the chain’s Michelin Bib Gourmand recognition and reputation for affordable fresh pasta.

The Imperial site also slots Bancone into a much larger Bloomsbury rebuild. The hotel is being transformed as part of a “once in a generation” renovation, and the wider scheme is set to include Arcus, a rooftop bar and restaurant, alongside other new hospitality space in the area. That gives the pasta opening a different feel from a standard branch launch: it is not just another room on a high street, but part of a district-wide reset that is trying to make Bloomsbury a stronger place to eat, drink and stay.

For regulars who know Bancone from Covent Garden or Soho, the hotel setting changes the rhythm. The terrace makes the new restaurant look built for long lunches and summer evenings as much as quick bowls of pasta, while the Imperial location should pull in hotel guests, office workers and visitors moving through Russell Square. With 140 covers inside and another 60 outside, Bancone’s Bloomsbury opening looks designed to make pasta feel like a destination rather than a stop on the way somewhere else.