Osteria Ilaria forges modern traditions of Italian cooking

AT Osteria Ilaria, the next-door sibling to Melbourne’s world-class Tipo00 pasta bar, a healthy dose of Italian tradition is being born anew.

Highlight dish: octopus ndjuda with a fiery Calabrian sausage sauce.

THIS time a month ago, I was sitting down to my last meal in Italy.

Wanting to make it count, I found myself in the backstreets of Testaccio, a working class residential neighbourhood in Rome whose restaurants are famed for their offal dishes, given this was where the city’s abattoirs were housed and where workers were once paid in offcuts of meats.

A gruff, elegantly white-jacketed sexagenarian waiter brought a procession of dishes. Dishes that had been passed down through many generations, for this restaurant that opened in 1887 is still run by the same family, still cooking those same hand-me-down recipes.

It was quite enough to blow my little antipodean mind. A restaurant 130 years old! Through plates of testina di vitello, or jellied calves’ head meat, and pajata in umido, or veal intestines cooked in tomato and doused in pecorino, and a bollito misto of all the fatty, cartilage-y bits that redefine nose-to-tail, the sense of eating history was as palpable as a bowl of sublime spaghetti carbonara was perfection honed over a century.

However awesome and forever memorable that last supper was, I wouldn’t swap the comparatively youthful exuberance of Melbourne’s Italian restaurants. For our chefs have the freedom to incorporate ideas, influences and products, which keeps the cuisine alive in as important a way as paying homage to heritage by faithfully recreating recipes of times past.

Osteria Ilaria, the next-door sibling to Melbourne’s world-class Tipo00 pasta bar, is the perfect example of this.

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For it’s here that a healthy dose of Italian tradition is being born anew. It’s where you’ll find a mix-and-match menu of plates that includes whole baby octopus, grilled and splayed prostrate across a spicy moat of ndjuda (a spreadable sausage, $8 each), or fat kingfish slices drizzled with watercress emulsion and sprinkled with smoked eel ($18), or a break-with-tradition rendition of a classic carne crudo, where diced raw lamb sits atop a billowy cloud of airy eggplant ($17).

Clever and original cuisine; the lamb backstrap.

It’s modern, technical stuff with a firm eye on big flavours, where chef/owner Andreas Papadakis’s time in high-end kitchens before he hit the pasta machine at Tipo shines through.

Likewise, co-owner Luke Skidmore’s calm, quiet hospitality honed over thousands of services filters through the team that looks after the busy, bustling room with understated elan.

It’s a lovely room, where excellent soundproofing delivers buzz to this lunch without us having to shout, with the open kitchen providing colour and movement. Seats at the bar and kitchen are great for duos, while a couple of elevated booths at the back take care of bigger parties.

Skidmore’s drinks list adds an impressive collection of beer and creative cocktails to a round-the-world tour of wines across styles, varietals and price points, and while there’s good, if CBD pricey, by-the-glass drinking, it’s a list that better rewards cracking into a bottle.

And why not, for there’s more than enough good stuff on the menu to make lingering here a compelling proposition.

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Such as a great piece of pork scotch, tender and juicy, and served with a fine dice of soft stewed apple, all under a blanket of fennel seed-flecked crunchy breadcrumbs ($32). Or a fat finger of “pecorino cheesecake”, a salty-cheesy wobble of set cream that’s attended by great chunky pine mushrooms and a few superfluous nasturtium leaves ($16), or indeed the subtle iron tang that liver imparts to the excellent housemade pork sausage that’s served with a sharp rhubarb puree ($18).

Clever, original; all very now, all very delicious. Though none more so than a side dish deserving of star billing, where textural creamed corn and slabs of charred kernels are teamed with cima di rape (bitter turnip tops) cooked over coals, the lot finished with a dusting of pecorino and a good crack of pepper ($15). It’s this winter’s pick of the veg.

But that octopus to start is an equally keen contender for the opening act of the year. The whole octopus, tender and smoky and as dramatically presented as they come, loves the fiery Calabrian sausage sauce. It’s an inspired bedfellow, the sea and the heat working in perfect harmony. Ask for more of the house baked, fennel seed bread and wipe the plate clean.

While a couple of pasta-style dishes are offered – fat tubes of paccheri with prawns, gnocchi that looks after vegetarians with blue cheese and nettles ($21) – Osteria is not looking to cut Tipo’s lunch. Rather, the two offer a one-two punch of Italian style delivered with a just enough freewheeling freedom.

It’s very Melbourne, which I wouldn’t swap for the world – or even that carbonara.

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Osteria Ilaria delivers Italian style with flair. Picture: Rebecca Michael

Osteria Ilaria

367 Lt Bourke St, city

Mon-Fri from 11.30am; Sat from 4pm

osteriailaria.com

Go-to dish: octopus and ndjuda

Rating: 14.5/20