Pasta Evangelists to open three new UK locations this summer

Pasta Evangelists is moving into three sharply different UK pasta scenes this summer, with a Shoreditch opening due in July, a Soho site targeted for August and Winchester also slated for July. The new locations push the fresh pasta chain beyond its current cluster of London and regional sites and bring its UK restaurant portfolio to 14 in total, a clear sign that demand for made-fresh pasta is spreading well past the brand’s original footprint.

Winchester is the headline opening. The company says it will be its largest restaurant to date, with 131 covers and five pasta-making events each week, a format that leans hard into the theatre of fresh pasta rather than a simple quick-service model. That makes it a different proposition from Pasta Evangelists’ first counter-only restaurant in Harrods, which opened in 2021, and from the brand’s delivery-led roots. The mix of dining room seats and hands-on pasta events suggests the chain is betting that customers want more than a takeaway box, especially in a market where the experience around the pasta matters as much as the bowl itself.

The location choices also tell their own story. Shoreditch and Soho are two of London’s most competitive eating-out neighbourhoods, full of late-night footfall, office lunch traffic and diners who already expect strong pasta offerings from independents. A new Pasta Evangelists site in each area will put fresh pressure on nearby operators that rely on the same walk-in crowd and after-work trade. Winchester, meanwhile, points to the brand’s confidence outside the capital, where a larger restaurant built around events could become a destination in its own right rather than just another stop on a city-centre lunch circuit.

Pasta Evangelists began in 2016 as a cook-at-home fresh pasta business founded by Alessandro Savelli, Finn Lagun and Chris Rennoldson. Barilla bought a majority stake in 2021 for £40m, and the business has since added restaurants, delivery and masterclasses to its mix. Current booking listings show locations including Chiswick, Farringdon, Greenwich Cutty Sark, Guildford, New Oxford Street, Richmond, Bristol’s Replay Bar and Manchester Sale’s The Brooklands Tap, giving the brand a footprint that now stretches from restaurant dining rooms to more casual outposts.

The summer openings also sit inside a much bigger ambition. Pasta Evangelists said in July 2025 that it wanted more than 15 restaurants open or in development by the end of 2025, and it has previously set a target of 100 UK restaurants in five years with more than £30m of investment alongside franchise partners. For the pasta scene, that means the next few months are less about three isolated launches than about a chain setting its sights on a far larger slice of the UK’s fresh pasta map.