Founded by Bash Redford and Michael Lavery, Forza Wine is a neighbourhood, rooftop wine bar in Peckham that now has locations at the National Theatre and Soho. Boasting a huge selection of natural wines alongside charcoal roasted dishes including grilled flatbreads with Courgette, Prosciutto, & Lemon and Cauliflower Fritti with Aioli. We caught up with co-founder Michael Lavery to hear more about Forza Wine's origins and their newest opening on Manette Street in Soho.

Was it always your intention to open multiple Forza Wine locations? When did you realise this would be a real possibility?

We always wanted multiple locations, but it wasn't until we opened at the National Theatre that we knew something as big and central as Soho was on the cards. I didn't see us as zone one grown ups when we started.

There’s a real respect paid to vegetables at Forza Wine, often championing dishes like cauliflower fritti, pumpkin caponata and burrata, courgettes, peas and mint on the menu, was this an intentional decision?

Vegetables are obviously brilliant, we love them at Forza. Everyone should respect vegetables (and their elders). I wouldn't say it's intentional though, it's how we've always done things. We want to be accessible to as many people as possible, this means keeping vegetarians & vegans happy.

Accessibility also applies to value for money, we want as many people as possible to be able to afford our food, and having more vegetarian options helps us achieve that goal. Specifically regarding cauliflower fritti, that has stayed with us since day one purely because everyone loves it.

Forza Wine’s first two spots lend themselves to Summer with rooftop terraces, was this one your requirements when looking for a new site and how will Forza Wine Soho differ, being mostly indoors and on a street level?

Although it doesn't appear that way when you consider both spaces, Soho and the National Theatre each have 100 indoor seats and 70 outdoor seats. That split works great for us and was a huge draw to the Soho site. It's quite mad that our third site is our first ground floor site. It's refreshing to have a restaurant that is easy to find and isn't subject to lifts that break all the time! Ground floors for the win.

How much of the menu is cooked over charcoal and how does cooking over charcoal change the dishes and menu?

We would love to cook everything on coal, but we're not Asador Extebarri. Peckham always has three dishes cooked on the grill, one of which is the flatbreads we serve. Cooking bread over charcoal is amazing and more people should do it (same goes for fish), it's much cheaper than buying a pizza oven!

From an eating perspective, charcoal adds flavour and the difference in caramelisation over pan cooking is just incomparable.

Charcoal grilling in the kitchen offers an obvious advantage: you don't need pans. You can cook more food per square metre of kitchen space, and your kitchen porter will appreciate it since they don't have to wash a pan every time you sell a dish. We're in a small kitchen, so charcoal cooking is more fun and more practical for us. As long as you stay ahead of the game and don't let the fire go out!