Dining

Giuseppe, Arnaldo & Sons

15 June 2011

Being Italian, I usually am quite disappointed by a lot of Italian restaurants around the world, and I prefer to explore different cousine looking for more authentic flavours. But the menu outsite Giuseppe, Arnaldo & Sons in Southbank was too inviting to look somewhere else for lunch, especially the section with traditional Italian smallgoods like culatello.

A little hidden on the river bank, the restaurant has beautiful yet intimidating decorated glass, and I often wondered if it was a place too elegant for my usual blue jeans and t-shirt. It's not, and the staff offer you a warm but professional welcome. Waiting at the counter for our table, sipping some wine as aperitivo and nibbling some nuts, I started exploring the menu but was impossible not to stare at the glass smallgoods cabinet, in the middle of a beautiful pink marble table: there, protected as jewelry, were the salami, prosciutto and culatello produced by Maurice Terzini and Robert Marchetti.

That's a challenge: I moved from Tuscany to Australia only two years ago, and the food that I miss the most is smallgoods. I decided hence to try the cacciatore salami and the culatello, that's the best and inner part of the prosciutto typical from Modena.

Service is efficient and quick, but not too much so you can think they are pushing you. Good. The cacciatore salami is absolutely the best salami I had in these two years, and the culatello is excellent even if not exactly like the one produced in Italy: it's just a little different, probably a little bit too dry, but excellent anyway. The burrata was equally beautiful, and served at the right temperature, if only we could have had a better bread, a rustic one with a crunchy crust to match the superb extra virgin olive oil...

This very modern and sophisticated trattoria is simply what I was looking for, the focus is on the ingredients rather than the cooking or the presentation (both excellent, anyway), and it's a pleasure to see on the menu traditional dishes like the zampone, a pork foot stuffed with minced pork meat, or the ribollita, a winter vegetable Tuscan soup with bread and cavolo nero.

Interesting the offer of vini in caraffa, house wine on tap easy to drink and on the bill, and excellent the selection of desserts. Overall a great experience, bravi!

Crown, Whiteman Street, Southbank
Phone (03) 9694 7400

Pettavel winery and restaurant, Geelong