Rosetta

Back to restaurant reviews
Crown Promenade, Southbank, 8648 1999

My score: 4/5

I won’t ever know what it feels like to be Sophia Loren, but I reckon the closest I’ll get to it is here, at Rosetta, where the glamorous, plush surrounds and sensual food are so overwhelming that I had to retreat to the toilets to practice batting my eyelashes. Unfortunately, my optical antics prompted a kindly lady in the powder room to enquire if I’d poked myself with a mascara wand. Ah well, at least the waiters still regarded me as though I’d just flounced off a yacht in the Riviera, thirsty for prosecco and hungry for linguini or love.

Rosetta is Neil Perry’s ode to an Italy of the heart, suffused with romance and sophistication. It’s been open 18 months and has settled into a delightful comfort zone. It’s themed but it’s honest too, staying true to the simplicity of Italian cooking with dishes like pappardelle bolognese and pork sausages, though this ain’t your average spag bol or snags.

The quality of the ingredients stands out most in the raw dishes. If anything should prompt batting eyelashes, or indeed respectful genuflection, it is the gleaming plate of scampi. Fat, sweet raw shellfish loll about with jewels of orange, mint leaves and chopped pistachios. It’s relaxed and beautiful. Among the pasta dishes, it’s hard to go past the garganelli, a ridged tube tossed with squid and bottarga (cured, shaved fish roe) in a chilli tomato base. It’s a peasant dish that makes the eater feel like a king. Duck is roasted ‘al mattone’, that is squished under a brick so it cooks evenly and the skin forms a crisp shell. The meat is great but it’s the accompanying saffron-roasted apricots, collapsed to a sticky jam, that elevate the dish to the stratosphere.

This is an expensive restaurant but the showy splurge dishes that dotted the menu on opening (hand-picked crab with squid-ink pasta at $65, for example) have been trimmed. Luxury is woven through the experience, expressed in produce that’s not overly fiddled with, a nimble Italian-skewed wine list that’s delivered with aplomb and, of course, the marble, red velvet, chandeliers and curtains that seem to sigh their way around the room. There’s also a ratio of waiter to diner that feels like stardom, so even though I’m not La Loren, I’m happy to eat that A-list feeling at Rosetta.

See their website.

More big nights out:

Woodland House, 78 Williams Road, Prahran, 9525 2178
Jacques Reymond has been reborn as Woodland House, and the master has handed over to his two young protégés, Thomas Woods and Hayden McFarland. Dress up to eat dishes like salt-crust roasted beetroot with blackberry juice.

Ombra, 76 Bourke Street, Melbourne, 9639 1927
Upstairs at the Florentino is the obvious place to spend a big night out with the Grossi family but the salumi bar is always up for fun, and a succession of small, salty snacks is a great way to pace your party.

Cutler & Co, 55-57 Gertrude Street, Fitzroy, 9419 4888
Recently renovated and always interesting, Andrew McConnell’s flagship is a great place to immerse yourself in contemporary fine dining.

First published in The Age, March 16, 2014.