Settimo is Guy Grossi’s soulful love letter to the Amalfi Coast
In an elegant, playful Brisbane dining room it’s serving pasta al limone, and hand-cut seafood scialatielli all’amalfitana served with traditional anchovy sauce. There’s also a 170-bottle wine list, amari, grappa and a tight collection of cocktails.
Guy Grossi remembers the first time he went to the Amalfi Coast.
“There was this purity about it,” he says.
“The people there, they seemed to have a joy about them, and this feeling of lightness.
“It’s just the sheer beauty of the place.
“You walk from the blue of the sea to the lovely colours of the sand and the pebbles, and up into the village. And as you walk through the village, say somewhere like Cetara, you go past the eating houses and they’re all prepping or serving food.
“The smells in the street are just intoxicating, with beautiful olive oil and fish stewing and the onions sweating away, and of course the colatura [a barrel-aged fish sauce made with anchovies].”
These colours and textures and flavours of the Amalfi have inspired Settimo, Grossi’s new 150-seat restaurant, which opened in a first-floor space at The Westin Brisbane on Mary Street in late February.
There’s no shortage of Amalfi-referencing eateries scattered around south-east Queensland these days but Grossi has the chops to lean into the concept better than most.
The menu – spread across assaggini, antipasto, primi, pesce, carne and dolci – features Amalfi lemon chicken with chilli and rosemary; a dead simple pasta al limone; and a scialatielli all’amalfitana made with hand-cut scialatielli and served with seafood and colatura di alici, the anchovy sauce set to become one of the restaurant’s signature flourishes.
“The other day we did a beautiful centre cut of swordfish, cooked on the charcoal grill, and that was really lovely just served with these really beautiful mixed leaves,” Grossi says. “Things like that really represent the restaurant well.”
The food is accompanied by a wine list 170 bottles strong that leans towards Italian vino and Australian drops made in an Italian style. There’s also a small selection from Queensland producers such as Ballandean Estate and Golden Grove, and more esoteric drops such as a Bodega Chacra “Barda” pinot noir from Patagonia. Other drinks include a tight combo of signature and classic cocktails, and a collection of amari and grappa.
The design itself captures the spirit of the Amalfi through the use of terracotta tiling, timber tabletops, weathered VJ-boards, plenty of greenery and a liberal use of orange and blue. It throws together textures in a way that’s elegant and playful.
“We just thought an Amalfi feel would be great because the food is beautiful and pure and has this richness to it, but also this lightness to it,” Grossi says.
“So that’s the brief we gave to Mills Gorman Architects ... So, earthy textures and materials that were beautiful but not necessarily overly shiny – just a bit of roughness to them.
“[Creative Studio] Years Months Days did our brand collateral. They asked us, ‘If this restaurant was a character, who would it be?’ We had to write our answers down individually and I think three of us out of six wrote down Sophia Loren: sophisticated and a little bit cheeky – some rough patches but in an elegant way.”
Open Mon 6.30am-10.30am; Tue-Fri 6.30am-10.30am, noon-3pm, 5.30pm-10pm; Sat 6.30am-11am, 5.30pm-10pm; Sun 6.30am-11am
The Westin Brisbane, Level One, 111 Mary Street, Brisbane, 07 3557 8826.
Matt Shea is Food and Culture Editor at Brisbane Times. He is a former editor and editor-at-large at Broadsheet Brisbane, and has written for Escape, Qantas Magazine, the Guardian, Jetstar Magazine and SilverKris, among many others.