Eat out: Becco

14/20

Address 11-25 Crossley Street, Melbourne
Contact 03 9663 3000, becco.com.au
Open Tue-Sat noon-3pm, 6-11pm
Bookings Yes
Cost Snacks $12-$23; pastas $27-$36; mains $38-$60
Drink this Supercharged Italian stallion wines

Pro tip Hit the standalone bar for pre-dinner aperitivo
Like this? Try Tipo 00 for smart-casual pasta, 361 Little Bourke Street, Melbourne
Go-to dish Torched bombe Alaska with salted caramel, serves two ($38)

There aren't many restaurants where the waiter could tell you you eat like Pavarotti and you'd take it as the compliment it is intended to be. Becco is one of them.

This Crossley Street Italian is a legend. If the walls could talk, they'd probably be dead. They've seen some things, loitering around tables filled with Melbourne's best and worst celebrities and people who always pay their debts in cash (wink), for close to 18 years.

You think Chris Lucas invented fun dining? Think again. Becco had the formula a decade before: a bar-restaurant hybrid in a dodge alley, big on wine and service, and delivering simple Italian classics done right.

Flash back to '98 and the front windows revealed a providore selling pickles (now a private dining room) and a cashed-up crowd actively pretending they didn't want to be seen, all while sitting in the fishbowl knocking back ballsy reds.

Not much has changed. Co-founder Simon Hartley remains manager, despite selling his stake in the restaurant last year. The tiled room still glows pink from the clubby bar and the majority audience is big chunky men making important gestures with bread. Chefs may have rotated over the years, but Becco's fish and chips and other menu classics endure.

What was new this year, sadly, were whispers that something wasn't right. This, thankfully, was followed by news that chef Maurice Esposito, who closed his eponymous Carlton restaurant last June, had come on board as head chef. Has he righted the ship?

The sardines to start would indicate yes, bright, fishy and citrusy in the right places, punctuated by hits of raisin sweetness and the shattering crunch of the crouton crisps. There's lightness of touch to whiting ceviche too, lightly limey so you can actually taste the protein, crunched up with finely diced red pepper and fennel. No surprise from one of the city's best fish whisperers.

Also predictably good: crusty bread with a chewy crust, spicy olive oil you self administer, and solid gold service moments, like when a discreet table bandage is applied after you've wasted the sauce from your pasta all over the cloth.

Later there's a great special of braised ox tail packaged in sheep's stomach like Italian haggis, and bombe Alaska - a head-sized hulk of dark chocolate ice-cream and firm cake shrouded in torched Italian meringue. A-plus.

Less amazing, surprisingly, is the pasta. Our spaghettini one night is soft, the salmon and mussels cooked tight, and the oil tasting of oxidised garlic. I can't properly describe the thick-skinned spinach tortellini that follows - one bubbly waitress whips through the special so quickly we don't catch the filling, and it's delivered by someone else in a mute sulk who pours on our mystery (beef?) broth like it's lead on her enemies.

When you're somewhere with history like Becco, your reaction is to hope it's a bad night. I hope this, as the same waitress obsessively tops up our wine with every sip like a frat boy on a mission, and brings new sparkling waters without asking. It's a relief when a friend tells me I'm wrong.

"We're you in the right restaurant?" he asks. His suckling pig special was life-changing, the calamari still on point and the service outstanding.

He's right about the calamari. On my next visit I get the tiny crisp rings, barely floured, with punchy aioli. They're textbook. I also get what must have been his waiter, and it is a different restaurant.

This is the guy who tells me I'm Pavarotti, who brings the table bandage and over pours the briny rosé with a wink. He generally makes the night worth it in spite of another so-so cuttlefish pasta that lacks an acid-sweet balance, and a roasted pheasant dish with less-than-crisp skin.

So what to say of Becco 2015? I'm considering this surrounded by receipts, armed with a mixed bag of experiences, and with the weight of 18 years and a million fans resting on my shoulders. So I'll say this: Becco is a legend, and for reasons that still exist. It's had a hat in The Age Good Food Guide since 1998. But if it wishes to remain a living legend, it needs to step up.