Totti’s Bondi review: a piccolo slice of Italy

It feels a little dirty walking into a pub before noon, but at Totti’s in Bondi, my advice is to get in early.

Totti's, 283 Bondi Rd, Bondi. Picture: Melinda Hird

It feels a little dirty walking into a pub before noon, but there it is on the website: lunch, from 11.30. And I’m hungry. Bondi’s Royal is another classic Sydney boozer that’s now part of the Merivale corporate juggernaut. Most of the pub remains as it was: bars, bottle shop, pool tables. But it wouldn’t be a Merivale pub if it didn’t indulge in a little fantasy, in this case Italian immersion therapy: Totti’s is a piccolo slice of Puglia, or Abruzzo, 800m from Australia’s most famous beach.

Take a side passage to find a bit of the Old World hiding in the New: a barn-like dining room dominated by exposed beams, rustic finishes, wood-burning oven, whitish calico lights. Then the main event: a higgledy-piggledy courtyard that looks like a family stopped pressing olive oil, making sausages and feeding their donkey here just last week. Whitewash and raw stone, taupe market umbrellas and creeping vines, sprouting rosemary and corrugated iron verandas with suspended fans and two mature, ancient olive trees. What on Earth are they doing in Bondi? Of course they’re all part of the simple, rustic southern Italian conceit. All that’s missing is a smoky Piaggio Ape with a fat pig in the back.

And being here for a glorious early-autumn lunch only helps massage the fantasy: dappled light through silvery olive leaves on our timber slat tables, complete with director’s chairs in pale olive and off-white canvas. It sails towards cliché and then bears away, just in time. It’s a lovely, uncomplicated place to relax, eat and drink.

In one corner of the courtyard, the open kitchen. Simple food with a southern Italian bent: antipasti, a solid pasta section, wood grilled or roasted proteins and salad/veg. Food with no real place to hide, served hospitably, knowledgably. Food like fat, perfect Mission figs halved, sprinkled with pink Australian salt and quality olive oil.

Totti's, 283 Bondi Rd, Bondi. Picture: Melinda Hird

First, the party trick: “wood-fired bread” (pictured) is a convex, charry, pizza-like dome of bready excellence. Quality prosciutto; juicy rockmelon sprinkled with dried shiso leaves; creamy, snowy-white burrata with olive oil and a seasoning of shio kombu; loose, extremely good chicken liver parfait with a chive vinaigrette; and fat, fleshy butterflied sardine fillets (absolute beauties) in oil and sliced lemon. No disrespect to the kitchen, but it’s all in the produce.

Properly firm – absolutely right – rigatoni are used with a ragu of milk-braised chopped pork with a hint of tomato and chilli. Served with parmesan, it is the essence of three-element Italian-ness.

Pici – fat, hand-rolled, egg-free, fresh noodles – are a nice find in a restaurant. Machines can’t do it properly. Here they’re tossed with a “sauce” of cipollini onion, chickpeas, fresh parsley and a little stock, with cheese on top. Also good, particularly with stracciatella-dressed radicchio and pine nut salad.

Order “wood grilled fish fillets” and that’s precisely what you’ll get: fish (perfect, just-set King George whiting today) lemon and oil. There’s a bunch of crowd-pleasers, like veal schnitzel, whole roast chicken and 800g (before cooking) rib eye, $89. Wine prices will neither horrify nor encourage reckless drinking.

A Neapolitan ice cream wafer sandwich is thematically perfect; a wedge of plum and currant crostata with mascarpone, served on a paper-lined alloy tray, is nicely done too. As you’d expect.

Like much of what Merivale does, this is a fully realised package. Go pre-noon, enjoy the quiet; it doesn’t last.

AT A GLANCE

Address: 283 Bondi Rd, Bondi, NSW Contact: [phone]; merivale.com Hours: Lunch and dinner daily Typical prices: Antipasti $8; pasta $25; main $29; sides $10; dessert $12 Like this? Try ... Alberto’s Lounge, Sydney; Osteria Oggi, Adelaide Summary: Hot Totti’s