Don’t expect burrata or tiramisu at Giovanni Pilu’s new harbourside restaurant Flaminia. The menu takes inspiration from Italy’s port cities, sweeping from half-moons of mozzarella in carrozza to limoncello-soaked baba.
Italian$$
Before the restaurant, comes the moodboard. Teases, snippets and glimpses of what’s to come, designed to build a world, to draw you in. Salt-flecked fishing boats in the Mediterranean. Bundles of nets and fish scales on the deck. Fritto misto with a backdrop of ocean. The best seafood ever in a tiny restaurant in a town you’ve never heard of.
Can you bottle a sun-bleached summer on the Italian coastline? The leather-tanned skin and technicolour swimsuits of a Venroy ad. The carefree elegance of Alex and Trahanas’ latest collection. A Charli XCX holiday dreamscape: Lemons on the trees and on the ground, sandals on the stirrups of the scooters, neon orange drinks on the beach, Capri in the distance.
This was the pre-launch promise of Flaminia, the first new restaurant from Giovanni Pilu and Marilyn Annecchini since they launched Pilu at Freshwater 22 years ago, as rendered by its marketing team. But want the execution? Head to Victoria for chef Ellie Bouhadana’s St Kilda pop-up instead. The reality of Flaminia is more polished, less carefree, the room offering views over Circular Quay but no breeze through the windows, no raw sunlight warming your skin.
But then it’s hard to care too much about world-building when the cooking is this good. Deep red crudo of yellowfin tuna over pickled fennel topped with amber slices of bottarga. Handmade pasta with sauces that capture the intensity of the sea. Limoncello-soaked baba under ripples of mascarpone.
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This isn’t surprising, given the pedigree. But what is surprising is that Flaminia’s here at all. Catch Pilu on the floor, and he might mention that when the offer first came from the Pullman Quay Grand hotel (the reception is upstairs on the hull-shaped mezzanine), they knocked it back. But then he saw the site, a concept slowly materialised, and finally, he was in.
What if, he said, we looked at the harbour and went from there, taking Italy’s miles of coastline and the ebb and flow of its port cities as inspiration? Napoli, Cagliari, Venezia, Genova, Palermo. Pick four dishes from each, add a crudo bar with dressings inspired by each city, and cap it off with a “no burrata, no tiramisu” rule.
For all the other Italian restaurants cherry-picking greatest hits, this might feel like a straitjacket. But for Pilu, whose cooking has been closely tied to his home island of Sardinia for decades, it must be liberating to branch out, as well as present something more everyday outside of Baretto, his summery kiosk at Freshwater.
Still, your everyday is not his everyday. For antipasti, try charred toast wearing a sweep of baccala mantecato (Venezia), the salt cod whipped hard with olive oil but still retaining bite. Or half-moons of mozzarella in carrozza (Napoli), the crisp-fried sandwiches topped with a single Cetara anchovy, the cheese filling stretching for miles. For crudo, kingfish layered with preserved lemon and Taggiasca olives (Genova) is a treatise in checking salt with the power of acid and oil.
There’s beef-shin ragu if you want it, but better to stay Sardinian and pick the spaghetti, sweet with spanner crab, fragrant with lemon myrtle and rich with bottarga. That, or split the paccheri allo scoglio, a bounty of mussels, clams, squid and fish in reduced cherry tomato sauce, made for swiping with focaccia Pugliese studded with tomato and olives. More heft? Pork and veal polpette glossed with sticky jus for secondi is the definition of the everyday made elegant.
Italian is the food of the people, but eating Pilu’s cooking is a reminder that someone who dedicates their life to fine-tuning the craft can build in layers that others just don’t have the faculty to unlock. Dressings are light and balanced. Seasoning is precise. Sauces are intensified, but not so much that they’re heavy or strung out.
It’s a pleasure to eat, basically. And the concept is such that people who might typically only visit Pilu once a year or city workers who might usually pop in once then move on to the next new opening, can find many good reasons to come back and dig further.
Plus, there’s always the possibility of doing what one particularly extravagant book club was doing when a friend visited, and splitting the half-suckling pig ($550) between five while you discuss The Correspondent. (And that’s before you get to the possibility of shuffling in meat-filled plates of bollito misto in homage to Trieste or fiery 𝄒nduja on soft bread in reference to Reggio Calabria throughout the year.)
Flaminia’s name is a reference to the ship that first brought the Annecchini family to Australia in the 𝄒50s. It’s grounding, like the humble rimmed porcelain gracing the tables among more modern accents of sweeping joinery and stone, or the strong showing of Sardinian wines on an Italian-led list. There are anchors here. Flaminia’s strength is in holding firm to some, but then finding the pleasure in pulling up others and dropping them someplace else.
The low-down
Atmosphere: Picturesque coastal elegance with views over the harbour
Go-to dishes: Kingfish crudo with Taggiasca olives and preserved lemon ($25); mozzarella in carrozza ($18); paccheri alla scoglio ($58 for two); limoncello baba ($20)
Drinks: Spritzy aperitivi, plus a wine list split by northern, central and southern Italy, with separate sections for island wines (Sicily and Sardinia) and locals
Cost: About $160 for two, plus drinks
Good Food reviews are booked anonymously and paid independently. A restaurant can’t pay for a review or inclusion in the Good Food Guide.
David Matthews is a food writer and editor, and co-editor of The Sydney Morning Herald Good Food Guide 2025.
