Ronnie’s restaurant review Dan Stock: Vodka spaghetti with red sauce wins dinner

Our favourite cheesy, peppery spaghetti sauce now comes in waffle form at this Italian restaurant in Melbourne’s CBD.

Within every family there’s a dish that takes on mythical, mystical, properties.

It could be mum’s lasagne, dad’s roast lamb or nan’s lemon delicious, but there’s always a feed that will feature on the family’s death-row dish list or, less dramatically, as the meal requested by homesick kids who’ve long flown the nest.

For Matt Butcher, it was his dad’s spaghetti with vodka red sauce.

A simple dish, no doubt, but the alchemy of onion, tomato paste, garlic, cheese and cream — and a good glug of Russian water — and the joy it brought had the young Butcher hooked and went some way in planting the seed for a life spent cooking for others.

So, too, did the fact his dad was renowned for making the best pizzas in the area, with people travelling for miles to the humble takeaway joint in Lockington (a small country town near Echuca) that the Butcher family ran and where simple, tasty food reigned supreme.

Ronnie's vodka red sauce spaghetti — with a good glug of Russian water.

There’s no pizzas on the menu at Butcher’s latest restaurant, but you will find a version of dad’s pasta served in the handsome space that was for many years Guy Grossi’s Venetian inspired Osteria Merchant at the Rialto.

The room has been given a New York-Italian makeover at the hands of designer Samantha Eades, where a classic look of black bentwood chairs surrounding linen- and paper-clothed tables set with hefty cutlery and thick cloth napkins is augmented by black-and-white photographs of Noo Yawk “characters” who cite “waste management” as their occupation, with a please everybody/nobody soundtrack that might veer from D-Lite disco to Jackson Five pop and James Brown funk.

The lights are bright but the long marble bar overlooking the kitchen action is perfect for perching over a glass or two and a selection of cicchetti, or snack-sized bites, which are the mainstay of the menu.

Named after his dad, Ronnie’s might be an idea Butcher’s had that’s 10 years in the making, but such dishes as vitello tonnato jaffles and cacio e pepe waffles are very much of today.

The jaffle is fun, the buttery-crunchy white bread filled with poached veal and capers, with a tuna mayo sauce topped with a pond of chilli oil served to the side to dip and dunk. Reminding me of latchkey afternoon snacks made from last night’s roast, it’s comfortingly homely ($12).

Cacio e pepe waffles.

Team with a Birra Moretti fresh from the tap ($12) for an easy win.

Equally fun if slightly more sophisticated, the cacio e pepe – cheese and pepper – waffle is made from a parmesan rind-steeped buttermilk batter with added egg richness, that, once cooked golden, is a fluffy delight covered in parmesan snow cracked pepper ($10).

There’s an array of little bites and bobs to make a meal of bread-meat-cheese should you please, with nanna-chic bowls filled with such veg as smoked leeks with pesto ($10) and marinated zucchinis ($10) served alongside bresaola, buffalo mozzarella and rye focaccia, but those wanting to delve more deeply into the menu might start with the more simple pleasure of mortadella on toast.

Wafer-thin slices of meat are ribboned atop pan-toasted bread spread with a spicy arabiata sauce. Picked shallots and fresh thyme finish a pretty terrific take on toast ($9).

Outside a small selection of pasta and a few steaks from the grill, a couple of bigger plates include a terrifically enjoyable pork Milanese.

Smoked leek and pesto.

Mortadella on toast.

Crunchy crumbed and served blushing pink, the meat’s juicy and tender and teamed with a salty, zingy green olive gremolata and lemon-dressed zucchini to the side.

It’s an impressive, and very well spent, $30.

The tight wine list leans Italian and expensive, with glasses upwards of $14 and little under $80 a bottle, and I imagine they do a roaring trade in knock-off spritz in the forecourt-yard for office workers celebrating a return to the CBD.

To finish, strawberry sherbet sprinkled Neapolitan ice cream is as retro-fun as you’d imagine ($14).

And Ronnie’s spaghetti?

Like a lurid sunset, the tomato sauce brings to mind a can of SPC, as do the squiggles of spaghetti they coat. Sweet but tempered with good cracked pepper heat, the pasta is tossed through onion and matchsticks of mild salami, fresh buffalo mozzarella torn atop elevating the lot. It’s a $20 bowl that’s as comforting as the memories from which it’s made.

Ronnie's at Rialto Plaza.

RONNIE’S

Rialto Plaza, 495 Collins St, Melbourne.

Open: Mon-Fri from noon

ronnies.melbourne