Restaurant relaunch after owners confess to reading the market wrong

A Kendal restaurant has relaunched after admitting it got it wrong following a change of direction last year.

Nick Ward and Giuseppe Sepe have reverted to their original vision for Sapore, on Stramongate, as a restaurant serving authentic Italian food, including some of the more modern dishes and cooking techniques currently being used in Italy.

Giuseppe said: “We are once again aiming to bring a little bit of Italy to South Lakeland.”

The duo opened Sapore, which is Italian for ‘taste’, in October 2021. Last January it closed for three months while the kitchen was refurbished and then re-opened with a small-plate, tapas-style Mediterranean menu.

“It was something we had always wanted to try and it suited the expertise and passions of the staff we had at the time,” said Giuseppe.

However, the change saw a dip in interest from the local customer base.

Scoglio featuring king prawns calamari mussels n’duja toasted pine nuts cherry tomato sugo garlic and chilli oil and langoustine

Nick said: “I think that local people always think of the premises as an Italian restaurant because of its long previous history as Paula Gianni’s and then Little Italy.

“We now realise that the tapas-style offering was not the direction we should have gone in.”

Giuseppe added that cost of living pressures had also played a part in trade dipping.

To mark the relaunch, Giuseppe and Nick have introduced a ‘happy hours’ deal, at the request of customers who remembered a similar scheme when Paulo Gianni’s operated at the site.

Giuseppe said: “We want people to think of us once again as an Italian restaurant like the site has been for so many years in the past, rather than a tapas restaurant.”

Sapore currently employs 12 staff but is keen to take on at least another two staff. Giuseppe said: “We hope to take on more staff if the relaunch if a big success.”

Sapore features a restaurant with about 80 covers and a bar area downstairs. The upstairs section can also be hired out as a function room.

Meat for the menu is sourced locally from Cornvale Fine Foods of Melling, while fish comes from Hodgson Fish of Hartlepool. Italian ingredients are sourced from G&O, a specialist food importer.

The duo also run Urban Food House in Bowness and Hooked, a seafood restaurant in Windermere.

Nick, originally from Poulton-le-Fylde, spent 10 years in the hospitality industry in London and managed restaurants in Manchester and South Lakeland before he and Giuseppe bought Urban Food House nearly six years ago.

Giuseppe grew up in Naples and worked in high end hotels and restaurants in Italy and Switzerland for several years before moving to the Lake District and working in hospitality in Windermere and Ambleside. The duo met around eight years ago.