The group will reopen Iberica Farringdon as a Camino later this month, with the Victoria restaurant set to rebrand as a Camino in mid February.
It will also open a pintxo bar in Covent Garden in the spring.
Camino, which is led by founder Richard Bigg, bought the two Iberica sites out of administration in December, with the three other Iberica restaurants closing as part of the process.
The Farringdon restaurant will be the first new Camino tapas bar and restaurant since the group’s Shoreditch site, which launched in 2017, and will open on 22 January.
Many of the interior features at both spaces are being retained, including Andalusian tiles and glass lanterns at the Farringdon venue, which will have space for 66 covers in the restaurant and 35 in the bar.
The management team at Farringdon has also been retained.
Executive group chef Nacho del Campo has created new, site-specific dishes for the Farringdon restaurant, which include Basque-style baked crab; pressed suckling pig; and dark chocolate cigar.
The two new sites will also have more extensive wine lists, overseen by Bigg and head of drinks Hannah Duffy Russo, showcasing wines from some very notable bodegas and a range of exceptional 30-year-old sherries.
Plans for Victoria
The Victoria restaurant, meanwhile, will be set over two levels with a 38-cover ground floor bar and a 100-cover restaurant on the first floor. There is also a 48-cover terrace that will open in warmer months.
Bigg says that he initially wasn’t interested in the Victoria site because it had struggled as an Iberica but was swayed by the strong restaurant trade in the area. “There is an Ivy there that trades all day and some good operators in the area,” he says. “We think we can turn it around.”
His priority for Victoria will be ensuring that the split-floor space works for all day parts, he adds.
“We are going to adapt the restaurant on the first floor a little bit, but most changes will be on the ground floor bar.
“In the daytime the space needs to be seen as a cafe and at night a bar. But if we call it a bar no-one will come in the daytime, and if we call it a cafe no-one will come at night, so we need to avoid those two words. I’m still working on the concept.”
A new pintxo bar
The group also intends to grow its portfolio further with the launch of a pinxto bar in London’s Covent Garden later this spring. Called Pintxito, the small 30-cover, 550sq ft bar will be located within the arches of Covent Garden’s piazza.
“Nacho is from Vitoria-Gasteiz, the capital of the Basque country, so it made perfect sense,” says Bigg. “It’s a super cool space.”
Pintxito will serve a range of hot and ambient pintxos alongside a wine offer of txakoli available in white, rose, red, orange and sparkling varieties, and wines from the growing region of Rioja Alavesa.
Design features will include double decker shelves to separately hold food and drink and a menu written on the wall.
“It will be table service but extremely informal,” adds Bigg. “We are going to have a lot of fun with it.
“I don’t go to Covent Garden to meet up with friends and have a drink, it’s tourist central. So what I want to do is create a place that Londoners want to go to as well as tourists.”
Camino launched in King’s Cross in 2007 and later opened two further bars and restaurants in Monument and Shoreditch. In 2023, Bigg opened a sister bar, Bar Rioja, dedicated to wines from the Rioja region of Spain next to the King’s Cross site.
The company went into administration during lockdown but was later bought by Bigg and co-founder Nigel Foster, securing 77 jobs.
