Adelaide’s Fugazzi restaurant steps into Rigoni’s shoes
Check out Adelaide’s smart New York-style dining venue and a sweet diversion in Victoria’s Otways.
HOT IN THE CITY
Fugazzi Bar & Dining Room, Adelaide
Adelaide’s cobbled Leigh St, tucked between Hindley and Currie and heartland of the city’s thriving small bar scene, has a glamorous new resident. The New York-style Fugazzi, which opened in April, resuscitates the old Rigoni’s site, an Adelaide institution and favourite with politicians and business heavyweights for more than 60 years.
Restaurant trailblazer Simon Kardachi (whose stable includes the nearby Shobosho and another modern Italian favourite Osteria Oggi) pays homage to Fugazzi’s well-loved predecessor with a sumptuous fitout that combines moody martini bar with a chic dining room that might just as easily be in Milan or New York. Joining Kardachi is husband and wife chef team Max and Laura Sharrad, he late of Restaurant Orana and Noma, she a Masterchef favourite. Their menu is more playful than that of a traditional ristorante; prop at the bar with a glass of wine and slice of pizza or revive that old Rigoni’s tradition (and critically endangered species), the long lunch. Fresh pasta and aged meats star but it’s hard not to fill up on the moreish snacks. The white bread mortadella finger sandwich is delightful; the “Roman Vegemite” toast, with Sicilian anchovy, lemon and whipped butter, utterly addictive. And do try the wood-roasted cabbage with macadamia cream.
Adelaide-based designer Studio-Gram has cleverly combined marble, timber and velvet drapes with a fire engine-red wine fridge and walls lined with Fornasetti plates to create a thoroughly modern space that also manages to feel cosily nostalgic. And the black and white loos are next level. Open 11.30am to late, Tuesday-Sunday.
CHRISTINE MCCABE
COOL IN THE COUNTRY
Platypi Chocolate, Forrest, Victoria
Mandy Bishop believes chocolate equals fun. She guides patrons at her cafe and shop on the best way to enjoy an indulgent hot chocolate. A ganache bomb is dropped into a mug holding a slurry of flavoured chocolate (mine is blood orange), on to which you slowly pour hot milk until the bomb breaks. Immediately add the rest of the milk, stir, then pop in a chocolate-dusted marshmallow.
Mandy, a keen home chocolate-maker for decades who turned professional in 2018, opened Platypi with her husband Michael in Forrest, a village in the Otway Ranges 150km southwest of Melbourne. She wants the experience to be “playful, with a touch of decadence and in a natural environment” where platypus are often spotted. The pair placed their architect-designed chocolaterie and cafe in such a way that it flares out into the eucalypts beyond the terrace.
The chocolate is Belgian but much else is local. The mint, spearmint, lemon and thyme come from the garden, and they make their own honeycomb for the best-selling honeycomb echidnas. Raisins are soaked in shiraz from nearby winery Dinny Goonan, and high-end spirits from Timboon Distillery go into the likes of whisky fig fudge and a fabulous strawberry schnapps and lime ganache.
But they’re always experimenting. Young chief chocolatier Steph Miller and her team create their own bars – pomegranate and cashew anyone?
In the cafe, Mandy and Michael dish up beautiful house-made soups, paninis, sausage rolls and samosas, followed by sweet treats such as hedgehog and chocolate cake, and Frog In A Bog (chocolate mousse).
Open daily 9am-3pm; online sales available.
JEREMY BOURKE
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