2 weeks ago
7
Two nights a week, the Umberto team’s fresh-pasta store Pastificio Sandro moonlights arsenic a set-menu Italian edifice Prova, with charry mortadella skewers and a fancy mentation of nonna’s soup.
Dining successful a deli – oregon a abstraction adjoining 1 – isn’t caller successful Italy. But it’s fractional the charm astatine Mortadeli’s pasta barroom successful Torquay and Enoteca Boccaccio successful Balwyn, supra family-run grocer and vino store Boccaccio Cellars. It’s the propulsion origin astatine newcomer Prova, too, which takes implicit a Thornbury pasta store with pedigree astatine weekends.
“It’s not a trend, it’s a necessity,” says Marco Finanzio, who’s down Prova and the pasta shop, Pastificio Sandro, arsenic good arsenic long-running favourite Umberto Espresso Bar.
“It diversifies the connection and shows radical what we tin bash with what they tin buy.”
On Friday and Saturday nights, a charcoal linen curtain is drawn crossed the shop’s High Street frontage and visitors participate – “in precise Melbourne fashion” – from the backmost laneway.
Instead of buying for house-made caller pasta and fancy vinegar, they beryllium down to a six-course acceptable paper of polished, provenance-driven dishes, delivered to conscionable 14 diners astatine a time. It’s a splash of finesse for a portion of the interior northbound that excels astatine casual dining.
Whether you’re perched astatine the array utilized by time for pasta-making oregon beside the fridges whose lights are dimmed to acceptable the mood, caput cook Adrian Bressanutti (ex-Stokehouse) delivers each crockery and the communicative down it.
A cheffier ode to a crockery his nonna utilized to marque involves a chickenhearted brodo (broth) that’s clarified, past glammed up with parmesan foam and “very special” Kyneton olive oil. Bottoni, a button-shaped ravioli-like filled pasta helium makes with chestnut flour, bob successful the soup.
The chaotic barramundi connected your plate, wrapped successful rainbow chard and finished with leek veloute and oyster emulsion, was apt caught that morning. Mortadella (made by Fabbris successful Campbellfield) is folded, coiled onto a skewer and flame-grilled connected the hibachi with a glaze of chromatic and fermented chilli.
The $125-a-head paper volition alteration “seasonally and sporadically”, with an overhaul each fewer months, oregon to lucifer a vino that radical beverage manager Andrew Barry is peculiarly excited about. Right now, unexpectedly, a barbaresco pairs with dessert – a pear poached successful nero d’avola, with cocoa mousse and olive oil.
Open Fri-Sat 6pm-late
Back laneway, 822 High Street, Thornbury, pastificiosandro.com.au/prova
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