"Beppi Polese has watched Sydney grow from a hick town to a multicultural society - at least as far as its food tastes go. When he opened his restaurant in 1956, no Sydney-sider would eat calamari or mussels. His persistence with our tastebuds has been rewarded."

Not my words, but those of Leo Schofield, editor of the inaugural Good Food Guide, in 1984. It's a book full of ghosts; restaurant names that once shone bright and are now but faded memories. Eliza's, Bagatelle, Taylor's, Natalino's, Yellowbook, Eric's Seafood Cafe, Chanterelle, You and Me.

The Great Survivor is Beppi's, the only restaurant to appear in both the first and the 30th editions of the Good Food Guide (and every one in between), under the same management.

Beppi's has never loosened its tie, ripped off its white cloths or installed a money-making menu of pizza and red-sauce pasta. To this day, either Beppi, now 89, his son Marc, or head waiters Branko Cergol and Vito Mariniello greet you at the door, then lead you past displays of flowers and fruit to a white-clothed table set with fresh bread and small bowls of olives, sun-dried tomatoes, tapenade, chilli oil, and fresh butter curls.

Then comes a display basket of daily specials - freshly made pasta, herbs and vegetables - shown in the raw, and a printed menu that lists many of the same dishes Schofield would have tried in 1984. No wonder the food - zuppa di cozze e vongole, prosciutto con melone, potato gnocchi della mamma and ossobuco with grilled polenta - has a timeless quality.

There is little fancy or tizzy about chef Joe Camilleri's bianchetti - a tumble of golden, deep-fried whitebait with school prawns and soft-shell crab ($36 for two). A thick, stand-your-spoon-up minestrone Friulano ($29) has a reassuring casalinga quality, as does house-made spaghetti alla chitarra with chestnut and wild boar ragu ($39). This is Italian food as it used to be, and you can sense how familiar and comforting it is to the obvious regulars.

I find the unsauced dishes taste clearer and brighter than the sauced. Beppi's saltimbocca ($41) - wads of veal scaloppine interleaved with prosciutto and asiago cheese - may be too old-school for some, but the grilled scampi is a treat, a mountain of sweet, fleshy, marinated Western Australians in the shell ($43/$59). Cergol turns up with fresh figs for approval. They come back halved and so lightly toffeed they crack to the fork.

The cellar is legendary, running from the 1964 Grange Hermitage for $2000 to worthy contemporary Italians such as the spicy, plummy 2011 Buglioni Valpolicella ($61), imported by the Poleses. An excellent soave (Bertani 2010, $15/$58) sparks a tale of the young Beppi, working room service at the grand Gritti Palace in Venice in 1943. His task? To deliver a bottle of soave to a big, bearded American, smashing away at his typewriter in a darkened, smoke-filled guest room. Hemingway.

Charm levels are high, as are price levels. The glory days may be over, but who else does butter curls, fillets fish at the table, and puts the silent contract of hospitality first and foremost?

As one waiter says, as he de-crumbs the table, "Sometimes old-fashioned is good, yes?" When it means ritual for the sake of ritual, no. Nostalgia and sentiment is not enough. But when it means a majestic wine cellar, dining rooms that should be heritage-listed, and that mix of the familiar and formal that only Italians can do, yes.

THE LOW-DOWN
Best bit: The bottle-lined cellar rooms.
Worst bit: No sea salt on the table.
Go-to dish: Scampi alla griglia marinate con varie erbe e brandy, $43/$59.

Terry Durack is chief restaurant critic for The Sydney Morning Herald and senior reviewer for the Good Food Guide. This rating is based on the Good Food Guide scoring system.