The cafe turns out to be a cafe, deli, restaurant, cooking school & cinema. That's a lot of stuff going on for a place with about eight feet of frontage down a quiet laneway.
Upstairs (Sopra, "above" in Italian) at street level is the cafe, with seating for maybe 10 or 12 people, 18 if it's lunchtime when they put a few extra tables out in the lane.
Downstairs (Sotto or "below") through a doorway just off to the left of the cafe is everything else. The combination venue also does breakfasts, lunches, serves as the hotel bar etc. for the Causeway Hotel above it, just like Solarino does in its little lane. The only downsides to that are that the decor downstairs is a little hotel lobby-ish in parts, and because the bar is completely open on to the restaurant there's a chance there'll be some people having a loud good time at the bar when you're after a quiet meal. We've seen it loud and quiet on different visits.
I wonder if the Phelans inherited a whole lot of digital projectors from a quirky distant aunt? Sopra uses one to project the menu onto one wall of the cafe in the same way as Solarino, there's one set up in Sotto used to project films (silent and captioned) onto a wall of the restaurant, and our waiter/barman/front of house said there are plans to set up another one upstairs pointing outward to do laneway cinema some evenings. The frustratingly incomplete website also suggests you can use the restaurant for having movie/dinner parties. I'd like to know more. Guys, finish your website! Readers hate dead ends.
We came expecting (maybe hoping for) a Solarino clone with brilliant antipasto and a wide range of innovative pasta, but Sotto e Sopra is quite a different beast.
The menu is in several parts. There's a cafe menu of large salads and standard pastas, and a restaurant menu with four starters, four salads and five mains (the night we were there). I believe both menus are available both upstairs and down. The dishes are almost all Italian but interestingly one main and one entree were Vietnamese. It takes a skillful chef to cross multiple cuisines and more importantly to put together a menu across multiple cuisines where the flavours of different dishes don't clash. We can't answer that question because we ordered Italian (mostly).
Our friendly waiter(/barman/front of house - he was the only staffer upstairs, and considering we were the only diners upstairs he was quite deft in being right there when we wanted something and subtly at the other end of the bar when we wanted to be on our own) happily made room for us at the end of the big marble counter in the cafe. We ordered some bubbly (Stefano Lubiana NV $ 48. Yes, $48. I almost don't want to mention it in case it's a typo on their wine list, but that is the smallest markup I've ever seen in a restaurant) and ordered.
Doing The Entree Thing
The tasting plate ($24) has two small portions of several of that night's salads or main dishes. Manto thinks this is a brilliant marketing and diner happiness tool. The restaurant gets to show off all its stuff, and the diner gets to try everything first so they can choose a main that they know they will enjoy (assuming they don't order all entrees and mains all at once like most people do). On the plate were small serves of
- the porchetta with apple relish. The pork was slightly dry but otherwise the dish was just as per the main (see below)
- salad of rocket, prosciutto, peach and fior de latte. Good quality ham, good balance of sweet and savoury, and it's nice to see a kitchen getting all seasonal with the peaches.
- ma hor (seared scallops on pineapple with a spicy peanut and duck sauce), and a crispy pork rice paper roll. The scallop was a tiny bit undercooked but the sauce rich and flavourful, the crispy pork in rice paper roll was a pleasant textural contrast and the roll was vibrant with herbs. I don't like pineapple but someone else ate it so I assume it was nice pineapple. Good dish.
- rolled confit duck leg as per the main (see below)
- a bowl of good olives and huge chunks of preserved lemon (which had presumably been marinating for a long time because their flavour was very mild).
Carpaccio of beef ($12). A classic carpaccio (seared on the outside but we forgive them - actually the little bit of searing enhanced the beefiness which was good), tender shaves of beef with rocket, parmesan and olive oil.
Around about now, a garbage truck backed up the lane to pick up the bins from a cafe a couple of doors down. Beeep-beeep-beeep-beeep-beeep. Does anyone know anyone who's actually been run over by a reversing truck? Ah well, these are the joys of laneway eating. It only took a couple of minutes.
Doing The Duck Thing
"Would you like to split a duck thing with me?" Manto asked Moulard.
"Well, I'm ordering the roast duck" said Moulard.
"And I'm having the confit duck" piped in the Periguexse.
"Okay, we're all doing the duck thing together."
"This is not a dish for amateurs or beginners" quoth Manto. An R2-D2 shaped cylinder of well executed confit duck, big strips of candied orange peel and of radicchio, and swirls of a red wine syrup ($20.90). The orange peel was very sweet, the duck very rich and the radicchio very bitter; to avoid one flavour overpowering the rest you need to get the proportions in your mouth just right. I liked the dish but it would have been easier to get that balance right (and would have presented a little better) if the peel and radicchio had been more finely sliced.
The other duck thing was a roast duck breast with a sour cherry sauce, kipfler potatoes and wilted radicchio ($34). We forgot to take a photo I'm afraid. The duck was dark and sticky on the outside, probably basted with the cherry sauce while roasting. It was quick-roasted all through to a perfect pinky-purply medium rare. I don't know that I've ever seen roast duck breast on the bone in a restaurant before. It doesn't sit easily on the plate and obviously getting the meat off the bone is harder for the diner than with a boned breast. The upside is that the bone helps hold in juice and adds flavour. A bit of a bold choice by the kitchen, as you have to get the cooking level just right. Which they did.
Not Doing The Duck Thing
Porchetta (pork marinated with herbs and roasted) of pork belly with an apple relish and salad of roast pumpkin, Swiss chard and feta ($32). The pork was a standout. Every bite had that pork-belly unctuousness that we always hope for. I thought the relish could use some acid, but of course I always think that. The salad was a pleasant salad. Let's be honest - you don't order the pork belly because you want a salad.
Saffron linguini with crabmeat, zucchini, chili and grilled lime ($23.90). Fair chunks of crab, pasta with a softness that suggests fresh-made, elegantly sized strips of zucchini and a nice kick of chili and garlic. Good acid balance provided by the lime, and the grilling is a thoughtful touch that adds a hint of char and caramelisation. Confession : I really wanted the roast duck, but Moulard ordered first and I wanted to try as wide a range of dishes as we could. I am such a martyr to this cause. I enjoyed the pasta.
We were all kind of full, but inescapably looking at the display case full of lovely cakes and tarts that was right next to my head. We convinced ourselves that dessert would be okay if we shared it. The vanilla creme brulee and chocolate chip cookies ($11.90) were a treat. The custard was nicely vanilla flavoured and textured with an absolutely spot-on silky smoothness. The brulee was thin and crisp and was burnt to just the exact right level where the bitterness makes the sweetness sweeter without overwhelming it. I don't think I've ever had better.
The cookies were really tasty and we enjoyed them. I've read a lot in American food press in the last few years about jazzed up versions of "home cooking" classics like cookies and ice cream making their way onto menus but I've only seen a few instances of it here.
Overall, the food was well thought out and very well executed, with nothing over- or under-cooked or misflavoured. And that's no small thing with dishes like the pork belly and roast duck on the bone being a bit on the tricky side. Not to say that it was in any way unattractive or unrefined, but the choice of duck breast on the bone and the big chunks of radicchio and orange suggest that the kitchen's focus is on flavour and technique rather than presentation and refinement. I'm good with that (as you will know if you look at any of my cooking). We had shared entrees and desserts and a hearty main each, a couple of bottles of really good wine and walked away for about $70 each. Good stuff for laneway eats on a casual night out.
Cheers,
Ecumer
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