The 'hot & new' list: Rosetta and Neighbourhood Wine

Each year The Age Good Food Guide releases a list of the 10 hottest new restaurants that have opened since the last guide was published. Over the course of this week we'll reveal the full list.

• Tonka and Epocha

ROSETTA
Riverside, Crown Melbourne, 8 Whiteman Street, Southbank, 8648 1999

Rosetta is the Sophia Loren of restaurants – sexy, savvy, and in love with great pasta. You’ll want to dress for dinner and order cocktails at this upper-crust Italian, which is a little bit Hollywood, a little bit Vegas, a little bit Manhattan and a lot of bella Italia.

The Age restaurant reviewer Larissa Dubecki says: "I thought they didn't make restaurants like this any more. The sort of restaurant where you might pause on entering to readjust to the expensive gleam of mahogany tiles, the clack of marble floors, the billowy fouff of soft white curtains, the gentle light of chandeliers hanging from ornate recessed domes. Where opera, not Ibiza, provides the soundtrack."

The low down
The best bit: Old-world opulence
The worst bit: Sometimes sketchy service
Go-to dish: Garganelli with squid, bottarga, tomato and chilli, $35
Wine list: A lengthy, fully fleshed tribute to the wine regions of Italy

The full review: Rosetta

NEIGHBOURHOOD WINE
1 Reid Street, Fitzroy North, 9486 8306

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Up a flight of stairs above a pizza joint, you'll find a former underworld gambling den reborn as a sophisticated wine bar serving Euro-leaning dishes such as pig's head terrine and oysters, designed with wine in mind.

The Age restaurant reviewer Larissa Dubecki says: "Nuevo speakeasies are popping up everywhere but Neighbourhood Wine - housed in a clandestine gambling parlour once operated by the Black Prince of Lygon Street, Alphonse Gangitano - has them all jealously weeping into their whiskey sours."

The low down
The best bit: A great local
The worst bit: Paper napkins
Go-to dish: Pressed pig's head, $15
Wine list: Eclectic, globe-trotting list with something worthy at every price point

The full review: Neighbourhood Wine

The next two restaurants on the 'hot and new' list will be revealed at lunchtime tomorrow.

The Age Good Food Guide 2014 will be available for $10 with The Saturday Age on August 31, from participating newsagents, Coles, Woolworths and 7Eleven stores, while stocks last. It will also be available in bookshops and online at theageshop.com.au for $24.99 from Tuesday, August 27.