Leonardo’s Pizza Palace offers New York pizza in a retro cool restaurant
The team from beloved Chapel St’s Ramblr have closed their doors and swapped their famous calamari noodles for pepperoni pizza. And while the queues make it seem like a runaway success, does Carlton really need another place?
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RIP Ramblr.
The funky fine diner that heralded an era of fun dining when it opened two years back served its last marron-loaded fries and said a final goodbye to the famous calamari noodles on Saturday night.
When Guy Bentley, John Harper and Nick Stanton opened their contemporary restaurant on Chapel St, it marked a return to more serious cooking for Stanton from slinging cheeseburgers at the trio’s Leonard’s House of Love — which still serves a packed house of Prahran’s party people — and which quickly found many fans and much acclaim, with Ramblr rising to 20 in the delicious. 100.
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But opening a pizza joint on the opposite side of town proved the tipping point, the cross-town commute to Carlton the catalyst to close their restaurant.
Oh, and the queues probably had a bit to do with it.
Since opening in December, Leonardo’s Pizza Palace has been positively pumping.
On Saturday nights the waiting list at the no-booking restaurant runs four pages long.
Even on this midweek visit every table’s taken by 6.30pm, whether out on the Grattan St footpath, in the dark wood-panelled back room or in the natural light-bright front room where vinyl booths are demarcated with leadlight partitions and the walls are adorned with art you’d expect in a Carlton restaurant circa 1975 — a Camel cigarette-etched mirror, framed booze posters and op-shop water colours.
But this is no tongue-in cheek pastiche here to lure the beards and tattoos — though they’re all here, along with young families and the suited and booted alike — but more homage to the site’s 50-year career as Da Salvatore Pizza by the Metre.
Like their other venues, the team’s own sweat and tears transformed the space, peeling back layers to expose a glorious terrazzo floor, brick archways and wood-beamed ceilings.
It feels both new and lived in.
And though, yes, it’s achingly cool and searingly hot-right-now, everything about the package has been done with heart helped in no small way by terrific floor staff — fun, engaged, engaging, friendly.
It’s a simple offering of pizza and pasta that looks to Wise Guy Noo Yawk rather than Italy’s deep south for inspiration.
This is a refreshingly paleo-Keto-Atkins-free zone, for Leonardo’s does carb loading with rarely seen class.
Pretend you’re in triathlon training and order with abandon.
Because you won’t want to miss the selection of crostini to begin.
The line-up includes a fried sardine, splayed over whipped bottarga (cured fish roe) and topped with crunchy-sharp pickles ($7), a squiggle of punchy njuda (a spicy, spreadable sausage) with jalapeños ($6), rich roasted peppers with toasted hazelnuts ($5) and confit tomato sitting on a cloud of goat’s curd ($5).
Gosh, they’re good.
Nor will you want to skip the stracciatella — the Italian cheese that’s the love child of mozzarella and fresh cream — which Stanton serves with a scoop of confit tomato bright with fresh thyme along with a squirt of vibrant herb oil ($14). That it comes with two slices of fluffy white bread warm from the oven shows the smarts that elevated Ramblr haven’t been left that side of the river.
But let’s face it, we’re here for the pizza, which is epic in size and calorie count.
Every other table has ordered the pepperoni, so you’ll want to, too. It’s a monster topped with a plethora of tiny spicy slices of American salami, the light, charry blistered base providing ballast for the cheesy excess atop ($25).
Stanton’s Sichuan-tingling Chinese Bolognese that topped noodles at Ramblr here comes in pizza form on a white sauce and fior di late base and delivers all sorts of genre-mashing delight ($21).
And in a move that forever ruins pizza crusts hereafter, you’ll find a little jug of creamy-sharp ranch dressing served to the side that’s on dunking duties. It’s a game changer.
You won’t have room, but if you do, the tiramisu that comes in cheesecake form is equally revelatory ($10).
Nothing about this food is shy. It’s sometimes food amped to 11 — even the broccolini you order to assuage guilt comes under a blizzard of pecorino and macadamia cream, $10 — which makes it all the more enjoyable. Leonardo’s really is a whole lot of fun.
Licensed until 1am — and cooking pizzas until then — this is a hospo hot spot where knock offs might include a jug of the very smashable house “bath tub” lager, a grapefruit-tinged take on negroni ($20) or a field blend white from the tight list where bottles hover around $60.
As for Chapel St, the team aren’t giving up on the site, with plans to transform the long, narrow restaurant into a New York-style pizza by the slice joint, with a hidden bar out the back.
Because if you’re onto a winning thing, stick to it. Build it and they will come.
Leonardo’s Pizza Palace
Address: 29 Grattan St, Carlton North
Ph: 9242 0666
Website: leonardospizzapalace.com.au
Open: Mon-Thurs from 5pm; Fri-Sun from noon
Go-to dish: Pepperoni pizza
Score: 14/20
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