Fortitude Valley to welcome hidden Italian laneway restaurant

A sleek new Italian restaurant is coming to Brisbane, promising food unlike anything else in the city. And with plans to keep the kitchen open until midnight, you’re bound to find time to check it out.

A HIDDEN laneway restaurant is set to open in Fortitude Valley, promising Italian food like nothing ever seen in Brisbane before.

Taking over the former site of the hugely popular Thai restaurant Longtime on Ann St, Eterna is from the ambitious team behind the national Salt Meats Cheese eatery empire.

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Designed as a step up from their fast-casual offering, the new venue will serve traditional Roman-style food, alongside a wine and cocktail bar with 120 wines.

“We’re trying to do it as a cool experience – something a bit romantic,” co-owner Stefano de Blasi said.

“Our venue is somewhere definitely where you want to go to impress your partner or your date or friends.”

Restaurateur Stefano de Blasi at the site of his new Italian restaurant Eterna, which he will open at the end of the month in the former Longtime eatery location, Fortitude Valley. Picture: Liam Kidston.

The restaurant also hopes to become a much-needed late night dining hot spot for Brisbane, keeping the kitchen open until 11pm, with plans to extend that until midnight.

A complete makeover has just begun on the space (which was left vacant when Longtime moved down the road and rebranded as Same Same) ditching the Asian hawker market decor in favour of a cosy Italian laneway vibe, with marble tables and chairs in the alleyway outside, and a New York diner-meets-Roman restaurant vibe inside.

The former Longtime restaurant site in Fortitude Valley, which will be transformed into an Italian restaurant by restaurateur Stefano de Blasi.

“It will look like those restaurants in Rome behind the Colosseum – those hidden places that you can’t find easily but, when you do, they are usually the best places,” de Blasi said.

The menu will focus around three traditional pasta dishes done well: carbonara, amatriciana and cacio e pepe, as well as offer classics like porchetta, chicken cacciatore, mussel pots and lamb cutlets, plus a variety of traditional Roman street food de Blasi believes hasn’t been seen in the city before.

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“We see there is a bit of a gap in the Italian food scene up here (for something slightly more upper class),” de Blasi said.

“The demographic is less families and more corporates and people who want to go out and have a bit of an experience and vibe. They don’t want the fast-casual, they want something a bit more slow and to enjoy a glass of wine or two.”

Eterna is due to open at the end of July.