Last night I had what was possibly the nicest meal I have ever eaten.
Olivia and I took our friend Kate (visiting from Adelaide) out for Italian at Cafe Di Stasio in Fitzroy Street, St Kilda. I had been there once before at the recommendation of another friend Adrian, and was totally blown away. It’s a little pricey so we were waiting for a worthy opportunity to return there – Kate visiting Melbourne, for us, was once such excuse.
It was a warm and muggy night, so we started off with some lime infused gin & tonics. They suited the conditions perfectly and got us off to a nice start.
The wine list was … long. There were all manner of Australian, French and Italian wines that ranged in price from low $30s to several hundred with quite a lot in between. As much as I’d like to be I’m not quite in the market for a $700 bottle of wine just yet. Give it a few years, once my Italian food importing business gets off the ground and I win the Italo-Australian Chamber of Commerce award (aka “The Golden Prosciutto”) for outstanding achievement in the field of .. excellence – or I win Powerball, then we’ll talk about ridiculously expensive bottles of wine. This then raises the question of how much money can one justifiably spend, in good conscience, on a bottle of wine. Yes wine can be spectacular, but really, $700? But anyway, I digress – We started off with a Coriole Shiraz, followed by a Hollick Cab Sav Merlot. – Yummo.
Choosing what to order was quite difficult, the menu was full of interesting and slightly out of the ordinary dishes. I’m not suggesting that they offer weird food, simply different to what you’d see on the menu of your average run of the mill Italian restaurant. The difficulty in choosing only became more so when the waiter reeled off the specials. Each sounded nicer than the last. Roasted rack of veal with melted gorgonzola was the one that stood out the most. The problem was, the specials are not actually written anywhere. So whilst it’s very impressive that the waiter can reel off a list of 15 specials, it makes it really hard to make a choice since you’re always trying to remember all the different options (and to be brutally honest, I was so busy fighting my natural instinct to make the Homer Simpson salivation noise while the waiter listed the specials that it was hard for me to concentrate on what he was actually saying.). This is my one criticism of CDS. To choose from so many wonderful options you really need to see them on a list so you can take your time to ponder them.
Rather than go through what each person had, I’lll simply list what was brought to the table. We all had bits of each others meals anyway.
Entree.
Frittata with taleggio cheese and truffle oil.
Pasta ribbons with onion, burnt butter, cabbage, pepper and some obscure Italian cheese.
Crayfish omelette
Main.
Veal Scaloppine in a veal stock and butter sauce, served with potato gnocchi.
Rabbit loin stuffed with herbs and prosciutto and topped with burnt sage.
Roast duck – crispy skin and covered with a duck stock and butter sauce. Served with a herby, buttery home made pasta as a side.
Dessert.
Profiteroles with chocolate sauce.
Amaretto cake.
Cheese platter – cheddar, gorgonzola, ashed goats cheese, pecorino + pear and bread slices.
I won’t go into the nitty gritty of each dish, simply because I’d be boring you with superlatives. Everything was fantastic. I found myself savouring every mouthful. Let’s just say that it’s not often that I’m the last one to finish eating. I wouldn’t say that the food was overly fancy – it was simply executed with an excellence that I’ve not encountered very often. “But what about your parents’ cooking, Brian?” I hear you ask. Yes my folks have blown me away on countless occasions without really trying. In fact it’s because of them that I generally don’t go to Italian restaurants. But this meal was just different, I can’t express why, it just was. Perhaps it’s because last night we had dishes that simply don’t form part of my parents’ cooking repertoire.
The service was outstanding. The waiters were not pretentious as one might expect in a place like this. They were friendly and attentive without being too intrusive. I asked one of them where the head chef learned his trade. I would love to be able to cook food this nice. He carefully avoided giving a clear answer – must be a trade secret. I tell you though, if I were offered a chef’s apprenticeship there or at somewhere like Stefano’s in Mildura, I’d have to give it some serious thought.
It was a great night out. Wonderful company, and equally wonderful food. Until I have better, Cafe Di Stasio wins the “Brian’s Favourite Restaurant” award. There are many, many other places in Melbourne that I need to try before I get too excited though. Any suggestions, …anyone?
(Note to self: NEVER type up a post in Word then copy it into Blogger. You will spend forever going through the post replacing all apostrophes, dashes and quotation marks that don’t render properly)
