Di Stasio Citta brings art and Italian flair to the CBD
It’s clubby, cliquey and one of Melbourne’s most famous and enduring restaurants. Now St Kilda heavyweight Di Stasio has a city location — but can it live up to the hype?
Eating Out
Don't miss out on the headlines from Eating Out. Followed categories will be added to My News.
At the start of the night, a warm handshake across the bar, welcome my friend, please have a drink, here’s the best table just for you, anything you want, you just ask my staff.
By the end, grappa and kisses and bear hugs and entreaties to return soon. And in between an army of white-jacketed waiters ensuring the meal’s perfect choreography, with pasta sonatas and swoon-worthy saltimbocca and knee-buckling risotto al Barolo.
That’s the thing about a meal at Di Stasio. When you’re in Ronnie di Stasio’s sights, that exuberance and enveloping hospitality is intoxicating. For he is a master restaurateur.
MORE REVIEWS: LUME’S NEW DIRECTION A SHINING LIGHT
THE RESTAURANT WITH A SURPRISE REALITY TV ORIGIN
PRINCE A CHARMING REVAMP FOR RENEWED ST KILDA
But when you’re not, well, I also know what it’s like to sit in Siberia and have plates dismissively dumped and left uncleared and have that Cellophane song from Chicago play while paying handsomely for the experience.
Which is to say, di Stasio the restaurant isn’t for everyone, though its cliquey clubby St Kilda surrounds has drawn Melbourne’s artists, those who make money off them, and the expensively dishevelled who design and furnish artful buildings for more than three decades.
And here they all are, too, in the CBD at Di Stasio Citta, which opened a little over a fortnight ago and where the heady energy of a restaurant in the throes of collective passion is so palpable the air almost crackles.
It’s a beautiful space, definitive. Racy red leather chairs surround double-clothed tables set on a glorious terrazzo floor but it’s the elegantly long, seductive marble bar and the white walls behind it that’s the true focal point of the restaurant. For its here artist Reko Rennie’s video installation OA_RR is screened — an immersive, hypnotic three-channel film first shown at the Venice Biennale of the artist fanging an old Rolls and doing circle work in the desert. On other walls, Melbourne artist Shaun Gladwell’s work is screened. This is the intersection of modern art with hospitality’s timeless arts.
That bar is the pick for solo and duo diners in for a quick bite, as perfectly amenable a spot for the best mid-afternoon snack, the “after school sandwich” — herb-crumbed veal cosseted in fluffy buttered white bread, $16 — as it is a glass of Di Stasio’s own Yarra Valley pinot ($17) with a plate of paccheri (a large tube pasta) with a rich, refined ragu, the tubes just firm, the sauce with lingering comfort ($29/$38).
The full menu — it’s a huge carte that blends the St Kilda bar and restaurant menus into one — is cleverly served all day, all night, and one of the Citta wins at any time are the “cocktail canapes”. A finger of baked ricotta, crunchy baubles of fried mozzarella and a terrific spinach tart just three of the treats served on a pretty silver stand ($24). It’s the perfect pre-theatre tide-you-over.
You could play all day in the snack section. Velvety vitello tonnato covered in crunchy fried caper blooms is the best of recent memory ($26), while a vibrant patch of raw veg to dunk into bagna cauda — a decadent pool of blitzed garlic and anchovy — is simple perfection ($25/$32).
But larger dishes, such as pork slowly braised until it sticks to the fork, are equally compelling ($44)
All pastas come in two sizes, though you’ll likely want to upsize the delicate capellini (think supermodel-thin spaghetti) through which a generous amount of meaty crab is tossed with garlic, chilli and white wine ($38/$47). The al burro — a pure butter and parmesan emulsion with a crack of pepper — is the very definition of divine. Jesus wept ($28/$37).
Citta is as much a story of and credit to managers Mallory Wall and Chris Young who have hit the ground running, putting their collective experience to work delivering a masterclass in how to open a venue.
With the unsurpassable ability to take decisions out of your hands, it’s nigh on impossible not to get caught up in la dolce vita. It makes saying yes to another glass of Franz Haaz pinot bianco at $21 a pop — or, hell, a blowout bottle of Barolo from the big Italian cellar — too easy.
Yes, it’s expensive — that towering powder blue Murano chandelier won’t pay for itself — but Di Stasio has always been a place especially loved by those who don’t look at the bill, or pay it. There’s little change here to the formula that’s been applied to such successful effect over the past 31 years. Di Stasio offers a salve for a bad day, a salon for a good one; somewhere to celebrate or commiserate with equal abandon.
The food is delicious, sure, but a great restaurant is so much more. And this new outpost that’s at once timeless and of today, is just that. It really is hot in the Citta.
Di Stasio Citta
45 Spring St, City
Phone: 9070 1177
Open: Daily from 11.30am
Go-to dish: Capellini con granchio
Score: 16/20
Victorian winery named best value in the country
Acclaimed wine critic James Halliday has named this Victorian winery as the best-value in his annual wine awards — here’s where you can buy a bottle from your local.
How to get 20 per cent off food delivery
As Melbourne settles into another round of lockdown, many are stepping back into the at-home routines refined during the first wave. But for those shunning the stove, a popular food delivery service has knocked 20 per cent off all orders.