Regional Italian cooking rules at Vineria Luisa, the next chapter in Anna and Alessandro Pavoni’s inner-west expansion.
With a facade that’s barely been touched for 70 years, the former home of Marie-Louise Salon – and more recently Bar Louise from the Porteno team – will attract all eyes in Enmore this week when Anna and Alessandro Pavoni will relaunch the iconic inner-west site as Vineria Luisa.
The downstairs bar at Luisa, on Enmore Road, opens today, followed by the first-floor dining room on Thursday. It’s equal parts vineria and gintoneria, and Alessandro Pavoni says they’ve tapped the gin boom happening in Italy over the past decade, with gin from around the globe, gin-based cocktails and house-made tonics, not to mention a “Euro-centric” wine list.
But it’s food Pavoni is best known for, with a growing stable of venues that sweep Ormeggio at The Spit, a’Mare at Crown Sydney and Postino Osteria in nearby Summer Hill. Pavoni says he’s flexing some Italian muscle and exploring new territory with Vineria Luisa’s opening menu.
Buoyed by the adventurousness of locals at Postino Osteria, where tripe is a popular headline ingredient, Vineria Luisa will push the gondola out further on offal by way of tonnarelli with chicken giblets, heart, liver and tomato sugo. The chef describes the pasta as “fashionable in Rome”. Meanwhile, the frittatina of spaghetti alla nerano is a dish seldom seen in Sydney. Eggs are added to day-old pasta with zucchini and the resulting frittata is finished with provolone cream and more zucchini.
Also: strudel. “Nobody does strudel in Italian restaurants, but you find it in the north of Italy,” says Pavoni, describing it as lighter than the strudels common to Central Europe. The dessert menu will also travel closer to the toe of Italy’s boot with a Sicilian almond gelato infused with orange oil.
There’s still plenty of familiarity on the opening menu, however, and Pavoni is backing the “best ever” lasagne to be a Vineria Luisa favourite. “Not too dry, not too wet,” he said. The pothole of lasagne failings, he says, is using meat that’s too lean.
Other dishes include tuna crudo with pickled onion and cannellini beans; a wild greens pie with roots in Emilia-Romagna; and salted and fried ling fish cooked in sugo with pine nuts and sultanas.
When the Pavonis and long-term business partner Bill Drakopoulos acquired the Enmore Road site in March, it had already undergone a sizeable renovation, so a major refit wasn’t required. Drakopoulos’ interior designer son Perry Drakopoulos was brought in to give the space a “more feminine” edge, though.
“Perry had recently done (Greek restaurant) Akti at Woolloomooloo,” says Anna Pavoni. “He’s grown up in hospo, and has done a great job,”
There are now frilly skirts on the chairs, which are painted mocha brown on the ground level and green upstairs. Perry Drakopoulos says the room, with its booths and hidden corners, is “mafia in an elegant way.” Spot the Frank Sinatra album cover on one of the walls.
Lunch Saturday; dinner Tuesday-Saturday
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