Pizza and party, long lunches and lo-fi wines: la dolce vita takes many forms at Si Paradiso.
“But what about the sequence through the kitchen?” I hear the cinema buffs cry.
It’s a fair point. I’m just not sure there’s enough room for a film crew in Si’s snug scullery, where pizzaiolo Marcos Gentile and his team huff and puff to ensure guests enjoy a steady, uninterrupted supply of pizza.
Born in Brazil, Gentile has been at Si for four years and his billowy, high-walled pizzas suggest he’s developed an innate understanding of both the kitchen’s stone-based ovens and his airy, fleet-footed dough.
Sliced into six, these pizzas aren’t the sprawling slabs one orders to placate a crowd, but svelte, sensibly topped discs that work as a light meal for one or something to be split between two or three as a boujee bread course or ballast in anticipation of another round of cocktails.
Arriving at Si around the same time as Gentile was Larissa Goncalves: another Italian-Brazilian from Sao Paolo. Starting as a kitchenhand, Goncalves has steadily ascended the kitchen hierarchy until, late last year, she became head chef. And just as Gentile’s handiwork speaks to an affinity with pizza, Si’s new menu suggests Goncalves understands the Italian table.
So of course there’s pasta: plush seatbelts of pappardelle rendered glossy with a buttery shiitake mushroom sauce, say. While the noodles aren’t house-made, the golden, pangrattato-like rubble made up of tiny shards of fried scamorza cheese is. A rough-hewn roast tomato sugo doctored with nduja rides shotgun alongside squares of fried polenta, the presence of Calabria’s hot salami bringing “sour” rather than “menace” to the party. A fat brick of focaccia, gently toasted all-over, looks imposing at first but eats like an airy, crunchy dream.
Like most modern-day Italian eateries, there’s enough wiggle room on Si’s menu for excursions beyond The Silver Spoon. Scotch fillet sits in a creamy puddle lit up by porcini mushroom and black pepper: a glorious mash-up of the two most reliable sauces at any steakhouse. Great, French fry-style chips are presented with a tiny saucer of “liquid Gruyere”: a dense fondue-slash-mayo hybrid one might find in a kid’s meal served in business class.
While Goncalves oversees the frying of potato, the char-grilling of cow and other aspects of the kitchen’s day-to-day, she writes her menu with input from Ben Ing: the recently instated food consultant for Si as well as the one-time head chef of influential Copenhagen fine-diner, Noma. While Ing is yet to introduce wild-gathered exotica, 1001 ferments and other New Nordic flourishes to Si, he does bring an interest in provenance plus knowledge gleaned from more than two decades cooking around the world.
So as fun as it might be to dissect the beef tartare and guess who-did-what, you’re best off simply admiring how well raw flank steak and hazelnut get along, especially when the latter is turned into an “emulsion” of crushed, toasted nuts, as well as grated into a fine, snow-like dust. When I spied lobster crespelle on the menu, I figured it was an evolution of Si’s long-standing (and excellent) crab crespelle. Wrong. Crespelle 2.0 is more reboot than remake: the former’s base of fried roti replaced by a turret of puffy Chu croissant dough that’s primed with a squeeze of the spicy fish sauce sardella and lobster flesh. The result? A two-bite wonder that has cult snack written all over it.
Yet for all the liberties taken by the kitchen in interpreting the one true cuisine – when was the last time a trattoria served you palm heart, let alone palm heart served with pucks of slow-cooked leek coolly arranged in a “jacket” of the vegetable’s charred outer layer? – Si is an outfit that gets Italianate hospitality. The entire compound crackles with an energy that feels like the essence of la passeggiata: the evening stroll to nowhere taken by Italians as an excuse to socialise, see and be seen. Service led by Isobel Piggford is warm and obliging. Even the bouncers are, by security staff standards, approachable.
Vino, as it’s been from day one, is integral to Si’s identity. While the introduction of half-bottle carafes is a welcome recent development, the cellar’s focus remains lo-fi, organically farmed cuvees that play nice with food.
Talk to most Italians and they’ll tell you that a table without wine feels incomplete. But bring out the plonk and, bang! Now we’re living. Now we’re acting like civilised people. Now, to borrow one of Goodfellas bad guy Paulie Cicero’s most famous lines in the move, we can eat.
If it’s been a while between visits to Si, now would be an excellent time to check in on a restaurant that’s on the up.
The low-down
Atmosphere: a cool and confident Italian hotspot that’s well-positioned for its next chapter.
Go-to dishes: lobster crespelle.
Drinks: a cool exploration of lo-fi, organic winemaking for eaters, supplemented by great cocktails for those that came to party.
Cost: about $190 for two people.
Good Food reviews are booked anonymously and paid independently. A restaurant can’t pay for a review or inclusion in the Good Food Guide.
Restaurant reviews, news and the hottest openings served to your inbox.
Max Veenhuyzen is a journalist and photographer who has been writing about food, drink and travel for national and international publications for more than 20 years. He reviews restaurants for the Good Food Guide.
