Jacopo Corbetta might be used to cooking for Sydney’s in-crowd, but he’s now applying that precision to this majestic but homey sanger in the southern suburbs.
From Icebergs to Corbetta’s Kitchen. From the glamour of Bondi Beach fine dining in one of Sydney’s most iconic restaurants, to a semi-industrial Morningside estate in the Brisbane burbs.
How did Jacopo Corbetta get from there to here?
“Running a place where, on a Sunday, you open for brunch at 10am before going straight into lunch, which was a long lunch that might finish at around 4.30pm,” Corbett says. “And then 6pm is the first sitting for dinner. In between you have the terrace and the bar.
“There was just always food, food, bar, food. So it was maybe 12 hours straight of service. You reach that point where you need to take a break, right?”
From Sydney glamour to Morningside sangers
This was back in mid-2018. Corbetta would go on to do a stint at Matteo Downtown Restaurant, also in Sydney, before planning a move to Brisbane.
With a bit of mucking around back and forth during the pandemic border closures, Corbetta eventually landed at The Stores in West End (now closed) before starting a personal chef business. And then came Corbetta’s Kitchen.
And kitchen it is, rather than restaurant. Corbetta’s sits in a warehouse-style tenancy on Lytton Road, its neighbours the Fish Factory and The Morningside Meat Market. Walk through the sliding doors and you’re greeted by a simple counter with finish-at-home pastas arranged on the right and a sandwich station and hot cabinet on the left.
The pastas – lasagne, gnocchi, cannelloni, napoli and bolognese sauces, that kind of thing – are all keenly priced, and the fat, flaky sausage rolls already something of a minor social media sensation. But we’re here for Corbetta’s tight menu of focaccia sandwiches, and one in particular.
Corbetta’s Kitchen’s porchetta focaccia
For Jacopo Corbetta, focaccia means food trucks back in his native Italy – perhaps outside a football game or concert, he says.
“They have this massive porchetta. Then they cut off the bread, toast it and put the porchetta in. It’s the normality for us, so this sandwich is very much a taste of home.”
Sitting between us on one of the picnic tables out front of Corbetta’s Kitchen are two great slabs of focaccia. Slapped between is a generous amount of roasted pork, some salsa verde, broad leaf rocket and mayonnaise.
So it’s a taste of home but maybe a little elevated, Corbetta admits with a wry smile. He reckons there’s no real secret to a great porchetta focaccia sandwich; it simply comes to using fresh ingredients.
His take begins with a house-prepared focaccia that’s baked daily.
“We ferment it overnight and then bake in the morning,” Corbetta says. “I tried four different types of flour … at the moment I’m using an Italian pizza flour.”
Corbetta won’t be drawn on exactly where he sources his pork, but it’s a local product – “you can get really nice pork in Australia,” he says – that he marinates in garlic, fresh herbs, lemon, salt and plenty of pepper. It’s then strung shut, cut in pieces, sous vide over night and roasted in the morning.
The salsa verde is parsley, garlic, anchovies and a pepper sauce, the rocket broad leaf, which Corbetta uses for its extra crunch as much as he does its pepperier flavour.
As for the mayo, it’s “just a touch” to help bind everything together – there’s already stacks of richness in the pork.
This thing is one of the best Italian sandwiches we’ve had in this town. The focaccia is crisp enough to hold everything in place without slicing at your gums. The sous vide has left the roasted pork supple and easy to tackle. The rocket gives spikes of peppery crunch. The salsa verde acts as a vibrant, savoury through line.
We’ve talked before in this column about the good things that happen when a chef opens a sandwich shop. The porchetta focaccia at Corbetta’s Kitchen is what happens when an Icebergs chef opens a sandwich shop. It’s precision applied to something homey and comforting – appropriate for a bloke who now spends his days off mucking about with his kids in bucolic The Gap in Brisbane’s west.
It might remind Corbetta of Italy. For everyone else, it’s good enough to transport them there.
Where to get it
The porchetta sandwich at Corbetta’s Kitchen will set you back (a very reasonable, given its quality and portion size) $14.99. You can get one at 363 Lytton Road, Morningside.
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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.
