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When I think about my visits to new Italian restaurant Studio Amaro, a telling image comes to mind. It’s not the two-part dining room – a merry street scene with a dividing bar that hides a sleek rear salon – or the basement hideaway, a DJ den with a penchant for groovy, synth-heavy Italo disco. It’s not even the food, although there’s nothing wrong with contemplating fluffy focaccia, char-grilled steak with cheesy butter oozing into its crevices, or twirls of pasta gleaming in olive oil and excitement.

It’s actually all the empty plates I see. Or – let’s be accurate – plates eaten clean except for swipes of tomatoey juices, streaks of herb oil, the last lonely scrap of noodle. They speak to tasty food and convivial informality. They are the remnants of generous flavours, the artefacts of garrulous gatherings.

Studio Amaro is the latest, largest and most ambitious venue from the Commune Group, whose restaurant portfolio includes Firebird in Prahran, Tokyo Tina in Windsor, Hanoi Hannah in Windsor and Elsternwick, and Moonhouse in Balaclava. The only northside restaurant in the group is Richmond’s New Quarter.

So far, Commune has taken inspiration from Asia, dipping into Vietnamese, Japanese and Chinese cuisine. Though each is built on fond enthusiasm rather than assertions of authenticity, it’s still something of a relief that an owners’ group of mostly white guys has finally opened a European restaurant.

If it’s wrong to love fried bread stuffed with cheese that stretches so far it could wrap you in a hug, I never want to be right.

And what a place! Studio Amaro is an instant, go-to restaurant, a drawcard for sunny lunches, chatty aperitivi, dinner catch-ups and boppy drinking sessions. Light bathes the corner site by day; at night, everyone looks foxy by lamplight.

Mustard-coloured corduroy banquettes and design accents in olive green, chianti-red and dark chocolate, lean into retro romance. It’s a cool place; even the table of four using their phone torches to see the menu looked pretty happy about it.

So what about those plates you’re going to pick almost clean? The menu runs through snacks and antipasti, house-made pastas and a handful of proteins, bringing approachable variety without overwhelm. Sharing is the idea, but my phone-torchers each had their own main course; your night out, your rules.

I’ve got a rule: always order fried mozzarella. This grilled sandwich with basil and anchovy ($9) is a riff on carrozza, a famous Neapolitan street snack. If it’s wrong to love fried bread stuffed with cheese that stretches so far it could wrap you in a hug, I never want to be right.

The tuna carpaccio ($25) is decadent in a different way. Sliced raw fish is dressed in smoked tomato oil, dried olive crumb and sauteed capers: sea and land, succulence and crunch, opposites that irresistibly attract.

A coil of pork and fennel sausage sits atop chunky roasted peppers tossed with green olives ($19): it’s a plate of saucy, savoury sunshine.

Chef Daniel Migliaccio has been with Commune for seven years, mostly doing Asian food. But his family is Italian and he’s worked at mainstay restaurants, including Grossi Florentino and Sette Bello in Glen Waverley.

For the pasta, he’s experimenting with ratios of durum wheat, semolina and egg to make various sauce-catching shapes. Ruffled ribbons of mafaldine do an excellent job of snuggling rich, saffron-scented bisque and nubbins of prawn ($38).

The daytime menu shifts slightly: there’s spaghetti aglio e olio ($25), a simple tangle of bitey pasta, olive oil, garlic, chilli and anchovy.

Lunchtime also means panini ($16). Melbourne seems to have one fancy sandwich shop for every six people, but I’d beeline back for mortadella and salami piled over focaccia with milky-fresh cheese and tart green tomatoes.

Desserts are easy: tart of the day ($12) might be olive oil citrus cake, while hazelnut tartufo ($16) is pure nostalgia.

And of course, there’s amaro. The digestive varies from region to region, nonno to nonna, and there are about 40 different types on offer, some so bitter they make you wince. There’s amaro in the house cocktails, too, but I have two other recommendations: the Bellini ($16) with seasonal fruit is perfect at lunch and the Parmigiano Martini ($23) uses gin infused with cheese rind to bring rich, dirty, briny notes.

The wine list leans Italian and zips mostly around the $80 mark. There’s also easy-drinking table plonk from Mildura’s MDI ($35 for 500ml; $68 for 1 litre). Poured into water glasses, it’s another pointer to unpretentiousness.

Windsor is strung with restaurants, but it lacked an Italian all-rounder that can carry you with easy confidence any day, anytime, any mood. Studio Amaro has hit the dining scene – and the dance floor – right on time.

This review was originally published in Good Weekend magazine