Previous SlideNext Slide

Some restaurants are quite demanding. Their booking systems can be punishing; their menus complex. There are rules about where to sit and what to drink, turning dinner into an obstacle course, if not a marathon.

And then there’s Avia. A tiny wedge of bricks, mortar and glass that aims its narrowest point towards Taylor Square North, it’s in the hands of two young hospitality professionals who are giving neighbourhood dining a red-hot go.

They met years ago at Potts Point’s perpetually packed The Apollo. Stefano Marano was head chef for eight years, and Jack Reid was front-of-house.

With a small horseshoe bar and an open window lined with stools that looks across to the Darlinghurst Law Courts, it’s a charming site that has had several restaurant lives, Bei and Casoni being just two.

You might expect the food to be rustic and rough-hewn, but no, there’s plenty of refinement in the layering of flavours, and a few surprises in store.

The menu at Avia, which is Latin for grandmother, has been shaped by the cooking and the sense of hospitality passed on by Marano’s Neapolitan grandmother – and the philosophy is very much hands-on and handmade.

Focaccia, pasta, vinegars, sausages are all made from scratch. Even the rich, eggy rose geranium tart ($15), a wedge that echoes the shape of the room, gets its start when Marano picks fragrant rose geranium leaves in the morning to infuse the milk and cream.

You might expect the food to be rustic and rough-hewn, but no, there’s plenty of refinement in the layering of flavours, and a few surprises in store.

One is the chunky beef tartare ($24), seasoned with garum (made with chicken wings and shiitake mushrooms) and buried under a foaming parmesan dressing, hedge-hogged with crisp, tiny potato chips. Slightly crazy, but good.

Another is the tripe pasta ($31). I’ve never come across pasta with tripe before (“neither have I,” says Marano), but when you cook honeycomb tripe like a classic beef ragu with a load of carrots and onions, and wine and tomatoes, you get a ripper of a pasta sauce. The semolina-based sedanini pasta is a nice touch, the long, thin, hollow lengths (reminiscent of celery stalks if you squint hard enough) soaking up the flavours.

It’s not a snack-heavy list, but you could easily start with the squat little escarole pie, the leafy green seasoned with capers, olives and salted ricotta ($18), or the lovely crudo of kingfish ($25) under the gentle sweetness of melon and clean crunch of celery.

Bottoni ($36) are perfectly round little cushions of fine pasta filled with a mixture of salt cod and potato, and topped with squishy orange splodges of apricot done in the style of mostarda di frutta.

There will always be a house-made sausage on the menu. Tonight, it’s a chunky pork sausage sitting on a pond of cavolo nero pesto ($36) – clean-tasting (no fillers) and dusky with spice. Only one dish feels overly subtle: small potatoes in anchovy butter ($13) are pleasant, but it feels as though they are there only to tick the potato box.

Where other restaurants offer dishes that are easy on the kitchen – the platters of salumi, the bought-in buffalo mozzarella – Avia swims against the tide by making it hands-on. “We wouldn’t have it any other way,” says Marano.

Wines share the same philosophy. The L’Escale sauvignon blanc ($21/$106) from Clos Roussely in the Loire Valley shows the impact of Vincent Roussely replacing machinery in his vineyard with good old-fashioned DIY.

Snapper tail (market price) is a signature move – scored, seasoned and dry-aged for 24 hours before a slow grill on the hibachi and a quick roast. The dressing is a zingy tomato piccante with fresh grapefruit and parsley, and the fish cleaves from the bone.

There’s a gentle humility and pride to Avia that makes it a pleasing place. The palate throughout is of gentle sweetness and balanced spicing, nothing raucous, and the modesty extends to the casual but warm dining experience and the sense of pride from host Jack Reid. It may not ask a lot of you, but it gives a lot back.