Knightsbridge at lunchtime has its own particular theatre. Black cars nose along Brompton Road, Harrods bags swing from wrists and women cross the pavement in enormous sunglasses, even when the London sky has rather different ideas. Behind the dark, discreet façade of Bvlgari Hotel London, everything becomes quieter. Opened in 2012 on the edge of Hyde Park, the hotel has the polished confidence of somewhere that knows precisely who its guests are. Italian design meets London restraint: dark woods, gleaming surfaces, silver details and deep, inviting furniture. Downstairs, hidden beneath it all, sits the extraordinary 25-metre pool, spa and private cinema.
Sette sits on the ground floor, although it has its own door onto Knightsbridge Green, which feels rather appropriate. No need to parade through a hotel lobby. You can simply appear.
But we are here for lunch.
Sette has that wonderfully specific Knightsbridge crowd. At one table, a woman in cream tailoring and Alaïa flats is having what looks suspiciously like a working lunch over a glass of white wine. At another, shopping bags have been tucked beneath the banquette while their owners order pasta. There are excellent watches, very good blow-dries, cashmere, oversized jackets and the occasional flash of something recognisably Bvlgari. Conversations are low, glasses clink, waiters move quietly between tables. Someone looks as though she has come straight from a fitting on Sloane Street. Someone else almost certainly has. It feels glamorous, but importantly, not performatively so.
The room itself is warm and cocooning, with curved banquettes and intimate booths that make lunch feel pleasingly private. The lighting is low, the tables generously spaced, the whole thing designed for conversations that are not intended to travel. It is exactly the sort of restaurant for a conversation you don’t particularly want the next table to hear.
Sette, meaning ‘seven’ in Italian, is the seventh restaurant from New York’s Scarpetta family and its first international address. Founder John Meadow opened the original Scarpetta in 2008, bringing his version of La Dolce Vita to New York dining. London followed with an Italian menu that retains a distinct Manhattan polish. It explains something about the room, too. This is not an Italian restaurant pretending to be a little corner of Tuscany. It has New York in its bones.
And then the bread arrives, which rather sets the tone.
‘Scarpetta’ comes from the Italian expression fare la scarpetta, the glorious habit of using bread to capture the last of the sauce on one’s plate. Here, breads are freshly baked and pasta is made in-house daily, and restraint quickly becomes difficult.
Lunch might begin with burrata Pugliese, Datterino confit tomatoes and basil, or yellowtail with ginger oil and pickled red onion. The creamy polenta with a fricassée of truffled mushrooms is the sort of plate that makes everyone at the table quietly reach for another spoonful.
But pasta is really the reason to come. The Scarpetta Spaghetti is almost comically simple on paper: San Marzano tomato and basil. Nothing to hide behind, which is precisely the point. The pasta is made fresh each day and arrives beneath a glass dome, a little bit of theatre before the first forkful. Silky, glossy and deeply tomatoey, it is the restaurant’s signature for good reason. For something richer, lobster tagliolini arrives with acquapazza, Calabrian chilli, tomato and spicy basil breadcrumbs, while cacio e pepe ravioli comes with charred leek, brown butter and sage.
There is black cod with caramelised fennel and confit tomatoes, monkfish wrapped in Parma ham and a substantial Lake District pastrami rib-eye, but this is a place where ordering pasta at lunchtime feels not only acceptable but essential.
Dessert should probably be shared, although inevitably it isn’t. Delizia al limone brings lemon sponge, lime cream, Chantilly mousse and mandarin sorbet; the cappuccino mousse cake layers coffee ganache with mascarpone mousse and ice cream.
For something more celebratory, the private dining room can be closed off for an intimate wedding or lunch, while upstairs the Bvlgari ballroom can take care of something altogether bigger. A bridal celebration here could happily replace the usual hen lunch: Champagne, pasta, your closest friends and nobody wearing a sash.
And the men have been considered too. Dinner upstairs, then downstairs to Nolita Social, where the lights are lower, the cocktails stronger and DJs take things rather later into the evening. A stag, perhaps, but one wearing a very good jacket.
By the time espressos arrive, Knightsbridge is still moving at full tilt outside. Inside the booth, however, nobody seems in much of a hurry. And that may be Sette’s greatest trick: bringing a little Manhattan energy to one of London’s glossiest postcodes, then persuading you to stay for another coffee.
To book, visit: https://www.settelondon.co.uk/
For August only, Sette is also serving Culinary Director Adriano’s risotto al limone e ai frutti di mare, a lobster and seafood risotto with Amalfi lemon, created for the Plated London dining festival. Available from 1–31 August 2026, by advance reservation for tables of up to eight. To book the Plated menu, email [email protected].
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