Think Amalfi Coast, and most people think sunny lemons, fresh seafood and sweet tomatoes. Celebrated Italian chef Guy Grossi, who is channelling the Amalfi for his new restaurant Settimo in The Westin, Brisbane, thinks of a deep, dark liquid oozing out of an oak barrel filled with salted anchovies.

“Colatura di alici is a sauce made from the tiny anchovies fished off Cetara on the Amalfi Coast,” says Grossi. “They’re salted for 24 hours then layered in wooden barriques, weighted down and left to ferment. It’s the same process as the ancient Romans used for garum.”