Family-run takeaway window Levriero Italiano offers a tight menu focusing on panini, salads and soft-serve-style gelato sundaes.
Sanka Amadoru
I seat myself at one of the outdoor tables and wait for my panino to emerge from Levriero Italiano’s window. Two women, perhaps in their 50s, are nearing the end of their sandwiches and catch-up, and I’m unable to avoid hearing their conversation. One comments on her selection of lunchtime venue, recalling a glorified meal from a bygone chapter: “That place made the best sandwich I’ve ever had, and this is really close.”
Nostalgia continues to offer us refuge in a world blurred by the agitation of change. Simplicity, quality and accessibility are often what we seek in rose-tinted rearview mirrors, and good hospitality venues know how to deliver this while improving upon the experience of yesteryear.
Husband-and-wife duo Adam and Nikky Evagora decided to turn their hands to exactly this a few months ago at Levriero, offering a tight menu focusing on panini, salads and soft-serve-style gelato.
My lunch arrives: the mortadella panino. Layers of dappled pink and white lunch meat rest on oozing stracciatella, crowned with dense, fresh rocket. Bursts of texture and flavour are provided by halved green olives, and more subtly by honey and crumbled pistachios. I am reminded of a childhood where mortadella was cheap, profoundly uncool, and just as delicious as right now. My much-younger self would probably have made a face at the current sandwich’s filling list and tracked down a meat pie instead. Fool.
Nikky Evagora fondly recalls growing up in the northern suburbs, where the majority of Melbourne’s Mediterranean diaspora settled from the 1940s and ’50s onwards. She would wait for her mother to return from her shift at the Preston Market health food shop, laden with groceries carried on the bus trip home. Cold cuts, small goods and cheeses would topple out of the bag to be swiftly devoured.
Nikky and Adam have kept this family tradition alive; when their daughters are at weekend Greek school, Nikky does the deli and grocery trip so that the girls come home to still-steaming bread, vegetables, cured meats and cheeses that form fast and filling meals.
When the couple found a vacant kiosk near Heidelberg station they saw an opportunity to pay homage to their at-home experience of Melbourne’s Italian food culture. Their daughters didn’t need much convincing to join the enterprise.
The bread at Levriero Italiano is excellent. Schiacciata in the Tuscan style is long fermented before being baked to a gently browned exterior crunch, keeping the interior crumb soft. I try other panini to ensure this wasn’t a fluke. It wasn’t.
The ham and red pesto panino works well with roasted red peppers, stracciatella and rocket. The “Inferno” sandwich features a chilli spread, salami and olives. Provolone in this panino can only feign to offset the chilli, so if you’d like to bring down the heat (and perhaps your ego) a couple of notches, request less spice when ordering.
After sweating it out with the Inferno and several glorious minutes in Melbourne’s rare springtime sun, I seek out a cooling dessert, asking for the soft-serve rather than a thickshake or iced coffee. I imagine the nu-disco and house tunes are deliberately festive waiting music.
Soon enough, a hand emerges from the window, holding out what appears to be a gourmet reworking of a fast-food sundae: meringue and crumbled shortbread add a pleasing crunch to the strawberry (fragola) topping and creamy texture.
Perhaps some people in the venue’s growing following are attracted by the healthier vegetarian salad options. The roast vegetable salad’s zucchini and pumpkin retain a slight crunch, which helps to offset the generous amount of dressing. A Caprese salad favours more rocket than traditional basil.
Tip: If you’d like to bring down the heat (and perhaps your ego) a couple of notches, request less spice when ordering the Inferno.
Staff venture across from the nearby hospital; I suspect many are drawn by the consistency of not just the food offerings but also the smiles that beam from behind the tiny window.
This interpretation of Italian takeaway is not groundbreaking and it’s not trying to be. The Evagoras have wisely avoided applying their heritage in attempting risky fusion sandwich creations. Instead, they’ve focused on the values of philoxenia, which roughly translates from Greek to “a love of strangers”, and the local community seems to be responding.
“Whoever comes to our home is going to leave with a full stomach,” says Nikky. “That’s how we grew up.”
Three more places for panini
Aberfeldie Salumeria
Part deli, part Italian dry goods grocer, part caterer and part cafe, this side-street gem is worth the main-road detour. Cooked breakfasts in panino form are available, or choose between cold cut panini or cooked fillings such as porchetta with provolone and coleslaw.
27 Tilba Street, Aberfeldie, aberfeldiesalumeria.com.au
Pausa Pranzo
The name literally translates to “lunch break”. Choose from nearly 20 panini, including the hot meatball or eggplant parmigiana sandwiches. Get in early for a morning pastry and coffee, or have a fresh pasta lunch. Italian provisions and ready-made fresh pasta meals are available to take home.
166/168 High Street, Preston, pausapranzo.com.au
Zita’s
If you’re still unconvinced we’ve reached peak sandwich (or if you don’t care), try what might be the only place in town that does an octopus panino – with ’nduja, fennel and stracciatella making it next-level. Or simply kick back with a Montenegro spritz or non-alcoholic negroni.
16 Toorak Road, South Yarra, zitasfocaccia.com
Good Food reviews are booked anonymously and paid independently. A restaurant can’t pay for a review or inclusion in the Good Food Guide.
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