Where to find Melbourne’s extraordinary must-try pasta dish
This pasta dish has taken more than a decade to perfect to become a creation that’s last-meal stuff. And with a menu made up of a half-dozen other dishes you’re unlikely to find anywhere else, this restaurant is the essential destination for any Italian lover.
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Whether it’s a long lunch at one of Melbourne’s best fine diners, a knockout steak down on the Mornington Peninsula or a relaxed mod Middle Eastern feast at Shane Delia’s new Maha sibling, here are Dan Stock’s top picks for where to eat and drink this weekend.
FOR PASTA PERFECTION
It is, quite simply, the city’s most extraordinary pasta dish.
Called Vincigrassi, it’s a lasagne of feather light pasta sheets in which layers of beef ragu amped with a tiny dice of offal are teamed with the lightest touch of béchamel. Parmesan on top baked to a crunchy crust creates a plate that’s last-meal stuff.
Leo Gelsomino has been perfecting this dish for the best part of a decade around town, but now here with his name rightfully above the door, it’s at its best.
Lello is all about the pasta, with Gelsomino kneading and rolling, cutting, twisting and twirling pasta for a half-dozen dishes you’ll unlikely find elsewhere.
There are Sardinian dumplings known as culurgiones stuffed with potato and mint, “cacio e pepe” — the Roman dish of pecorino and pepper — made with a burnt-flour macheroni, and supple ribbons of tagliolini that might come as a twirl around Gippsland rabbit served on the bone.
Tiny pillows of the lightest gnocchi served with a saffron-tinged lamb ragu disappear in a dream, while pizzas and on-theme entrees — ricotta filled zucchini flowers; grilled calamari — and a few changing mains round out the menu that’s joined by a tight wine list that holds local interest and Italian traditions in equal esteem.
Add a dining room that’s quietly handsome, service that comes with owner-operator care and that lasagne and Lello is the essential destination for every Italiophile.
Lello, 150 Flinders Lane, city. lellopastabar.com.au
FOR A LONG LUNCH AT DINNER
Four years on and Heston Blumenthal’s paean to British gastronomy at Crown remains one of Melbourne’s most extraordinary dining experiences.
From the moment you enter the darkly dramatic scent-piped entry through to the Earl Grey-steeped ganache to eat with shortbread as a final parting mouthful, a meal at Dinner is sumptuous, special, and sublime. But Melbourne’s most accessible fine diner (currently ranked 6 in the delicious.100) will transition from its current a la carte format into a multi-course degustation-only menu from next month.
At $295 a person, the new menu becomes one of the state’s most expensive, and though such favourite dishes as the meat fruit and tipsy cake will continue to feature, the menu will constantly evolve to deliver what chef director Ashley Palmer-Watts hopes is “a dining experience that (guests) will never forget”.
So while the new menu applies to all bookings from July 16, there’s still a couple of weeks left to enjoy three courses of fantastically flavour-first fare for the relative bargain price of $140 a head.
Service is some of the very best you’ll find anywhere and makes a meal here a proper joy. An impressive cellar is as extensive as it is expensive, but a huge by-the-glass offering provides a chance to try some of the world’s best.
With a bar shaking some of the city’s best cocktails, a view that shows off Melbourne and a room that’s quietly opulent and supremely comfortable and, of course, the famous meat fruit that’s a non-negotiable addition to every meal, and Dinner remains right up there as one of our very best.
Dinner by Heston, Crown Complex, Southbank. dinnerbyheston.com.au
FOR A MOD MIDDLE EASTERN FEAST
Shane Delia’s done a reverse celebrity chef and has headed back into the kitchen.
The Maha chef has opened a smaller, more relaxed version of his mod Middle Eastern restaurant in Windsor in what was Biggie Smalls.
Promising a “relaxed local restaurant” the 40-seater, Maha East is an informal offering of mezze and bigger plates with a focus on good tunes, booze and easygoing bites — from hummus with Persian saffron XO through Turkish dumplings with burnt butter and rockling with pine mushrooms.
Southside fans of Maha’s famous slow-cooked lamb and Turkish delight doughnuts will no longer have to trek into the city for their fix, but Delia also promises a big veg focus.
Long-time Maha manager Ross Frame is looking after the new Windsor sibling that’s now open for dinner nightly with lunches served on weekends.
Maha East, 36 Chapel St, Windsor. maharestaurant.com.au
FOR A WINNER STEAK DINNER
Down on the Mornington Peninsula and fancy a steak dinner?
Do not pass go. Do not collect $200. Go directly to Counting House.
At the one-time State Savings Bank of Victoria you’ll find some of the best steaks in the state. Sourced from the Strathbogie Ranges and dry-aged for 28 days, there’s a black angus porterhouse and eye fillet on offer, but the scotch we tried was, quite simply, flawless.
With a perfect, salt-flecked caramelised crust that gave way to a blushing pink inner, the slightly sweet meat with its iron tang countered by a line of rich, rendered fat was as good as I’ve eaten in ages.
Beforehand, a selection of small plates or “tapas” quickly gets things rolling: cut curls of cuttlefish are nicely done, dusted in semolina and quickly fried tender, while miso-marinated lamb ribs are as fall-from-the-bone as you’d hope, the more-ish, umami-amped meat tender with a touch of chew.
Spicy Jamaican wings deliver as promised, leaving a good tickle of chilli on the lips long after the meat has been sucked from the bone and as far as beer food goes, they’re pretty good.
Bigger plates include a pot of Flinders mussels that are very good; the picante Provencale here is spicy number that comes with half a toasted garlic bread baguette and is also offered in a blue cheese version. There’s a parma on offer and a handful of burgers headlined by the ”monster” that has a perfect patty-to-bun ratio — the former a nicely seasoned pink-cooked puck teamed with melted plastic cheese, lettuce and tomato; the latter a proper old-school sesame-flecked number.
With sunny staff, a well-pitched soundtrack and that steak, yep, you can bank on a good time here.
Counting House, 787 Esplanade, Mornington. countinghousemornington.com.au
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