New Brisbane Italian restaurant gets reviewer’s tick

Among the copious Brisbane venues serving pizza these days, this new southside eatery promises to deliver one of the best.

I have eaten a lot of pizza this year.

Reviewing for the delicious. 100 – Queensland’s 100 most delicious restaurants  – I ate pizza from the south of the state to the north, chomping through dough creations made with both Australian and Italian flour, fresh yeast and sourdough starters, fermented for 24 hours and 48, and cooked in gas-fired, wood-fired and electric ovens.

Some were terrible – with bases that could substitute for chewing gum or toppings that looked like they’d been half eaten; while others were brilliant, a reminder why this Naples classic has ubiquitously become comfort food.

Ramona Trattoria in Coorparoo. Picture: Nigel Hallett

Opening in mid-August – too late for delicious. 100 – the new Ramona Trattoria at Coorparoo, in Brisbane’s south, serves pizza worthy of making the list. The venue is the work of chef Ashley-Maree Kent, whose resume has stints at some of the country’s best restaurants including Quay, Biota and Paper Daisy.

Ramona Trattoria is her dream of owning a casual, neighbourhood restaurant focusing on delivering affordable, traditional Italian fare and great wines. The affordability factor is probably more aligned to the suburb in which the restaurant resides, where median house prices are just shy of $1.5m, rather than being a true budget-friendly find, with pizzas $22-$30 and petitely portioned pastas $23-$34. But, as the saying goes, you get what you pay for, and the pizza at Ramona Trattoria is worth every cent.

The mozzarella en carrozza at Ramona Trattoria. Picture: Nigel Hallett

Our mortadella version ($30) is the most expensive of the nine on offer (with gluten-free and vegan options available), the supple pork sausage gently pleated across the pillowy, hand-stretched, wood-fired base, before a casual toss of crumbled pistachios and dollops of oozy stracciatella on top. It would have been easy to devour the whole thing had it not been for two substantial antipasti. The first: a crumbed and deep-fried cushion of smoky mozzarella ($15) designed to send cheese lovers into raptures, and the cotechino ($24) – a slow-cooked pork sausage dish traditionally served on New Year’s Eve in Italy to bring wealth into the next 12 months with the sausage cut into coin-like shapes representing money. The latter delivers all the joy of the Modena classic, its exterior crisp from kissing the pan and centre juicy, salty and well-spiced. It is served as the Italians do, with lentils and a bright salsa verde to balance some of that fatty goodness.

The mortadella pizza from Ramona Trattoria in Coorparoo.

Pasta is one of the restaurant’s signatures, each style carefully kneaded and shaped by hand in the open kitchen, which acts as the centrepiece to the warm, Tuscan-inspired, 48-seat fit-out. Less familiar varieties of pasta grace the menu, say, the triangular triangoli stuffed with butternut pumpkin and sauced with brown butter; or perhaps the thicker, square version of spaghetti, tonnarelli, which comes with pepper and pecorino or guanciale, pepper and pecorino.

The malloreddus pasta ($34) – likened to small ribbed shells – has been tinted with squid ink and comes in an intensely flavoured seafood sauce alongside clams, prawns, cherry tomatoes and green beans. It’s an easy pairing to a glass of rosato from the 20-bottle wine list that flits between Italian and small Australian producers, crossing both suburban and city price-points.

Ramona Trattoria’s Triangoli pumpkin pasta. Picture: Nigel Hallett

Award-winning Gold Coast mixologist Tom Angel has developed a considerable cocktail offering, though beware of the breathtakingly boozy Ramona’s margarita. Service is friendly, if a little lacking on menu knowledge, but the food isthe star here and the best way to finish is arguably with a handmade sfogliatelle. The fiddly pastry is often referred to as a lobster tail with a wave of crispy layers running down the tail. This version arrives piping hot, bursting with an orange-scented semolina custard that will have you stupidly burning your mouth for another bite.

Kent’s goal with Ramona Trattoria was to have locals visit at least once a week. If the current offering is anything to go by, loyal and frequent diners won’t be an issue.

Ramona Trattoria

131 Leicester St, Coorparoo

0422 383 044

ramonatrattoria.com

Open
Mon 5-10pm, Thu-Fri 5-10pm, Sat noon-3pm, 5-10pm Sun 1-7pm

Must try
Mortadella pizza

Verdict – Scores out of 5

Food 4

Service 3

Ambience 3.5

Value 3.5

Overall 3.5