Rigoni’s Bistro to return as Fugazzi Bar & Dining Room, run by MasterChef’s Laura Sharrad, her husband Max and Simon Kardachi
A MasterChef star, an award-winning chef and successful restaurateur walk into one of Adelaide’s best-known – and shut-down – restaurants. But this is no joke.
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The reopening of an iconic Adelaide restaurant site will signal the return of the long lunch, if new tenant Simon Kardachi has his way.
The restaurateur will invest around $1.2 million to revamp the old Rigoni’s Bistro in the city’s Leigh St, and open the doors to Fugazzi Bar & Dining Room, with 2020 MasterChef runner-up Laura Sharrad and her award-winning chef husband Max at the helm.
“We might bring back gueridon trolleys, multiple choices of oils and dressings, carvery wheels … a little bit of showmanship and sophistication,” says Kardachi, who is behind a number of successful city restaurants including Osteria Oggi, Press and Shobosho.
“It’s destined to be a great restaurant – it’s got size, flexibility, a kitchen, cellars … it’s also regarded as a tremendous lunch, dinner, all-day destination.
“We want to bring back the long lunch … everybody wants the long lunch because that’s how you experience food better; wine better.”
When Kardachi and the Sharrads open the doors to their long-awaited project – they’re aiming for Feb-March 2021 – it will have been nearly two years since a meal was served in the restaurant’s dining room.
Rigoni’s was one of Adelaide’s best-known restaurants, with a history spanning 63 years.
It opened in 1956 as Rigoni’s Cafe, in Moonta St, before the Caon brothers - Primo and Giocondo - took it over and moved it to Leigh St in 1979.
In its heyday, it was the restaurant of choice for the state’s politicians and powerbrokers, as well as couples and families looking for a special-occasion meal.
Following changes in ownership, and debt accrued between 2014-2018, the restaurant went into voluntary adminisraton in April 2019 and closed its doors two months later.
Landlord George Ginos had been speaking to potential buyers at that time. Kardachi was one of them.
But it wasn’t love at first sight.
“It’s a bit of a dog’s breakfast in there,” Kardachi says. “I couldn’t see a use for that old cigar lounge, which 35 years ago turned into a function room.
“I reckon the fourth time I was there with George, we were standing at the back of the room and a few things clicked … it was a little bit like Tetris.”
That problematic function area, left of the main dining room, was now the ideal space for a bar. It will also become the restaurant’s new entry.
“You can come in and sit at the bar and have a snack, or you can come in and have a six-hour lunch,” Kardachi says.
Fugazzi will be the second restaurant for couple Max, 29, and Laura, 25, who currently run Nido in Hyde Park. They’d been talking about the Rigoni’s site with Kardachi before Laura began filming for MasterChef at the beginning of the year.
“As soon as I came out (of the show) it was like, yeah, it’s the right time!” says Laura. “I’m excited. It’s a very cool venue to take over because there is so much positivity around it.”
Food will be refined Italian, she says. Both Laura and Max, who was named the Appetite for Excellence Young Chef of the Year in 2018, have Italian heritage and have garnered a loyal following at their Hyde Park diner.
“There will be lots of cooking over fire, there’ll be pasta on the menu somewhere, and I want to start making lots of cured meats and cheeses and breads ourselves – go back to old-school traditions and have a modern twist on it,” she says.
“It’s not fine dining by any means, but we’re just jazzing things up to be a bit more niche, clean, sophisticated. It’s all the smaller details that make the difference.”
Local architects Studio-Gram will bring the collective’s vision to life. “It won’t look anything like Rigoni’s but it will honour the site,” Kardachi says.
“There will be a little bit of grandeur and sveltness that you might get from the interior – boothing and decor.”
It will join a string of quality dining destinations to open in Leigh St in recent years, including Shobosho, Leigh St Wine Room and Pink Moon Saloon. “Leigh St is going to be a powerhouse,” Kardachi says.
