Why?

Because nobody else was talking about it.

Italian food in London means Rome, Naples, Sicily, Tuscany. Pizza, pasta, cacio e pepe. Fine. Abruzzo is the region in the middle that everyone drives through on the way somewhere else.

It has the highest peaks of the Apennines, sheep on every hillside, saffron, Montepulciano, and a way of cooking built for people who worked outside all day. It deserves its own fire.

Because London eats everything, and still hasn't eaten this.

It's the most curious food city in Europe. Street food here is a serious sport. And at nine on a Friday night, nobody wants a tablecloth. They want something hot in one hand and something cold in the other.

Because it's the most Abruzzese thing there is.

Every family in Abruzzo has an opinion on where to get the best ones. It's what you eat at village festivals, after five-a-side, on summer nights with forty people around a grill.

One product, done one way, for generations. We didn't need to invent a menu. We needed to light a fire.

Rustell is dialect for arrosticino. The fire added the H.

Rust, for the iron the meat cooks on. Hell, for the coal underneath. And the sheep in the logo is grinning because he knows exactly how this story ends.

We like heavy music, black t-shirts and loud rooms. We also like our grandmothers' recipes. Those two things are closer than you'd think: both are loud, both are honest, neither apologises.