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Sarti

Dani Valent
Dani Valent

Chocolate semifreddo from Sarti.
Chocolate semifreddo from Sarti.Craig Sillitoe

Italian$$$

Sarti    ★★★★
6 Russell Place, Melbourne, 96397822
Licensed AE DC MC V
Monday-Friday noon-3pm; Monday-Saturday 6pm-late
Small $4-$18; large $28-$40; sweet $5-$19

Sadly, there's plenty of crime in Melbourne's laneways. There are all those leggings worn as pants, for a start. Bad pick-up lines abound (here, in our sophisticated city, blokes still ask girls if they come here often). Then there is nacho pizza, considered such a serious vice that there is a special culinary crimes squad tasked with wiping it out. Another abomination is that Sarti isn't packed to the falchetta (that's Italian for ''gunwales'') for every service. It should be, because the food is interesting and delicious, the recently refreshed restaurant is pleasant (though I'd love a bag hook in the toilet) and the waiters are excellent.

Sarti has been here since 2005; chef Riccardo Momesso bought into the business in 2007. Momesso's family background is Calabrian and his food is a cool mix of southern Italian traditions and a brave and inspired modern outlook, which explains dishes such as wallaby scallopine with thistle spaetzle and chocolate semifreddo dusted with merlot salt, two among many dishes that are tapestries of texture and flavour. The prawn carpaccio floored me: pale, sweet, fatty prawns are dressed with mandarin oil, crisp rye and caraway crumbs, and bottarga (salted fish roe) mayonnaise. It's an arresting composition (sweet, salty, smooth, crunchy), dramatically presented on a black plate with each element shouting its quality. Other little bites present classic flavours in contemporary cloaks: cool, salty bocconcini are seamlessly stuffed with chilli green olives. Eating them goes like this: easy, yeah, easy, zap!

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Also try.
Also try.Supplied

Momesso grew up in an immigrant family with the salami-making, passata-bottling, rabbit-shooting traditions that make the rest of us feel like supermarket saps (and he's just released the book to prove it). There's always game on the menu - even a camel cameo on occasion. Fried wild rabbit panzerotti (pastries) with cinnamon-dusted shells were a characterful nibble. There was gorgeous, golden pappardelle made with duck egg yolk and coated with a ballsy boar meat ragu. And there's that wallaby, doing a tasty job of standing in for veal.

Sarti's co-owner, Joe Mammone (also a partner in nearby Il Bacaro), oversees a wine list that darts all over Italy without thumbing its nose at the good and the local. Wine advice is excellent: you won't feel like a knob if you know not nebbiolo. Sarti has hit a purple patch: fight laneway crime and fill it up.

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Dani ValentDani Valent is a food writer and restaurant reviewer.

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