Nido opens with Max Sharrad and Laura Cassai in the kitchen

Newly opened pasta specialist and bar Nido (or nest) wants its customers to feel as if they have “come over for dinner with 50 other people they may or may not know”, chef Max Sharrad says

Newly opened pasta specialist and bar Nido (or nest) wants its customers to feel as if they have “come over for dinner with 50 other people they may or may not know”, chef Max Sharrad says.

It’s an idea inspired in part by the family-run establishments at the heart of Italian village life.

So it’s fitting that Max is joined in the kitchen each night by wife Laura Cassai, a talented cook who is a permanent part of the team.

Max says they met working in the kitchen at Orana.

“That is where the attraction first happened,” he says. “Now, working back with Laura again, I can trust her to do everything.

“She has strengths where I might not have them, like making those delicate little pasta shapes and the intricacies of pastry. My mind goes at a million miles an hour so I might not have the patience for that. Her strengths play to my weaknesses, and vice-versa.”

The Nido menu begins with smaller nibbles to accompany a drink such as blue swimmer toasts with pickled cucumber, or gnocchi fritto “between focaccia and a doughnut”)with buffalo curd and bottarga.

A handful of pastas, such as beetroot and ricotta tortelli, are all made in-house. An early favourite is the squid-ink cavatelli, which finishes cooking in a fish and garlic broth, and is tossed with poached mulloway, Goolwa pippis, crab and squid.

Nido opened last week and Max says it is playing out as he and co-owner Simon Kardachi had hoped, largely thanks to the warmth and fun of Chris Woodcock and Laura Dimasi who manage the floor.

With Joybird set to open a few doors down, “we are creating a buzz again around this side of town”.

2/160 King William Rd, Hyde Park, 8373 2044, nidobarpasta.com.au