PROFILED BY DE GROOTS MEDIALike almost everywhere in the country Hobart’s love affair with Italian food continues apace – despite that World Cup penalty - and pizza and pasta joints are a dime a dozen around town. Some are good and others…. well, there are others. This is one of the better ones by far. There’s always a busy turnover of tables, families eating early, after-theatres arriving late and a constant stream of in-betweens and takeaways. The place buzzes. And little wonder. They do things properly, avoiding too much Aussie-fication to serve everything fresh and so simple you wonder why others around town can’t do it as well.
The bruschetta pomodoro is the real thing – slices of coarse-textured bread, generously rubbed with garlic, drizzled with good olive oil and topped with chopped ripe tomato and torn basil. The pasta dishes are similarly driven simply by two or three clean flavours while the pizzas run through the usual capricciosa, Napoli, pepperoni and margherita standards to “gourmet” pizzas, a term much abused, but here the epitome of restrained simplicity and balance, almost a culinary definition of Italy. Crack a BYO Chianti, finish with a gelato and cup of excellent coffee and you could almost be there.
Graeme Phillips