Previous SlideNext Slide

It is exceedingly rare for me to attempt to reproduce a restaurant meal in my home kitchen. I eat out multiple times a week; when I cook at home, I want comfort, old family standbys, and food that won’t hasten my inevitable butter-and-salt-flavoured demise.

And yet, just moments after leaving Totti’s, the Italian powerhouse in the Lorne Hotel that’s been imported from Sydney, I was eagerly Googling “milk-braised pork and chilli pasta” looking for a recipe.

I could not imagine a world in which I would not want to eat that pasta again, and soon, and I don’t plan on being in Lorne (or Sydney) much over the next few months.

The Lorne Hotel is the first Victorian location for the mega-group Merivale, which has dozens of venues in New South Wales.

Merivale specialises in bombast, in big venues with big personality, which tend to have the quality to back up that swagger.

Totti’s Lorne, located on the ground floor of the hotel, imports much of its menu and feel from the original Bondi location. Here, the kitchen is overseen by Mike Eggert and Matt Germanchis.

It appears that the gamble, of launching the Merivale incursion here rather than in Melbourne, has paid off. Bookings aren’t impossible to come by, but they’re not easy to snag either unless you’re happy to eat very early or quite late or in the middle of the afternoon.

As soon as you step into this room, you’re smacked with that whoosh of energy, that glorious clamour that only comes from a big restaurant full of happy people.

It was cold in Lorne the day I ate at Totti’s, but once I slipped into one of the orange banquettes and ordered a Passera cocktail ($22.50), a bright gin number with lime, hibiscus and passionfruit, I felt as though the spirit of the Mediterranean summer was with me at the table.

The welcome, from managers and servers and support staff, was enthusiastic and genuine. White walls are adorned with colourful prints, windows overlook the sweep of the beach along the Great Ocean Road, and a long open kitchen has a large white-tiled wood-fired stove at one end.

That stove is pumping out plate after plate of wood-fired bread ($16), a glorious pouf as big as a half-deflated basketball, dotted with char and sitting on every table in the room.

The game goes like this: order your bread (one serving easily worked for our table of four), then peruse the list of antipasti and choose a few things that might go with that bread. That could be anything from olives ($9.50) to a serving of prized Italian culatta ham ($35). Smoked albacore tuna ($17) comes over a juicy pulp of tomato, while thick slices of mozzarella are topped with salty bottarga ($14). Chicken liver parfait ($14) is tangy and silky and almost funky (in a good way).

Happy snacking turned to serious gorging once the pastas hit the table, especially that campanelle with milk-braised pork and chilli ($31), but also a perfectly al dente bucatini with shiitake, garlic and clams ($35).

Most of these dishes are imports from the original Totti’s (I’m apparently not the only one obsessed with the campanelle), but where the menu varies are the places where the chefs are using Victorian seafood.

There’s always a wood-roasted fish fillet, and a whole roasted fish (market price), and, if you’re lucky, whole crumbed King George whiting (market price; $36 the day I had it) as well, served simply with lemon and greens, its freshness shining through.

Totti’s has a glorious clamour that only comes from a big restaurant full of happy people.

When I visited, the tart of the day ($15) was a fudgy chocolate and hazelnut pie accompanied by a cookies and cream whipped cream thing that turned the dessert from decadent to outrageous. As lovely contrast, the panna cotta ($15) was wonderfully light, topped with citrus and pine nuts.

It would be easy to fall into nostalgia for the days when Lorne was sleepy, quiet, even a little bit daggy. It’s certainly tempting to do so when you’re stuck in the 40-minute traffic jam that snakes through town during peak times.

But the grand old hotels and beautiful heritage homes (many of them, sadly, replaced by big glass boxes) should remind us that Lorne was a town built on opulence, at least in part.

Totti’s, while anything but local, revives that opulence, that sense of drama and excitement, in a way that only a large hospitality group with deep pockets could likely achieve.

Eating here is extremely fun, the food is delicious, the service is very good, and the view is damn near priceless. That Merivale has been able to import this level of quality, while making it feel entirely effortless, is a seaside miracle.