Just Open: Salotto Bar and Restaurant, Kingston

The word "salotto" in Italian means sitting room and that's what Lorraine and Pasquale Catanzariti want people to feel in their new Kingston bar and restaurant on Kennedy Street.

"We were trying to make it like someone coming to our house, hanging out and sitting in the room," Lorraine Catanzariti says.

The Catanzariti family also own the 40-year-old Santa Lucia restaurant (Pasquale jokes he was probably born in the restaurant kitchen) and with this new venture the Italian classic - the lunchtime hangout of many a Canberra pollie and mover and shaker - has come full circle.

Salotto sits in the original Santa Lucia site (it also used to be the Kennedy Room, for those younger players out there) and the food is by Santa Lucia.

The layout will be familiar to Kennedy Room denizens - the bar and bench tables down one side of the room, more restaurant tables filling the other half of the room, and the chesterfield sofas by the front window. But this time the tables are set with gleaming glasses and lit by candles in chianti bottles - an homage to Santa Lucia.

"We wanted to give the room a bit more character and colour because it was a bit more basementy. We wanted a piazza feel, outside we have sofas and stairs for people to sit on," Lorraine Catanzariti says.

Outdoors there are distinctly Italian lace covers on the sofas, and yes, rows of steps for people to have lingering outdoor chats, and tables for a meal too.

Pasquale Catanzariti says it's a relaxed European-style bar - where people can come and go, linger over a coffee, stay for cocktails and order dinner as they please. It's the kind of bar that inspired him on his trips to Italy.

"The nightlife over there [Italy] isn't like a designated restaurant or a designated bar, or a designated nightclub, it's sort of all in one. So that's the style we're going for," he says. "Families could be in here eating, people could be in here having cocktails and drinks, coffees and what not. It's pretty much a casual bar."

"When my grandfather opened up Santa Lucia in the 1970s that was going out, there was loud music, food, good entertainment and that was the style. We're 40 years this year so we thought why not go back to our roots pretty much and do a modern version of that."

The menu is a cut down version of the trattoria style food served in the restaurant - half a dozen pizzas, a three house-made pasta dishes, plenty of antipasti and small bites such as fritto misto and meatballs. The mains include three-mushroom risotto, saltimbocca, rib eye steak and gnocchi. If you'd like brunch, there are a couple of all-day options - omelettes, poached eggs, potato fritters and pasta pockets filled with San Daniele prosciutto and ricotta "then fried and drizzled with warm honey".

All the dishes are scalable - they can be served as shared plates, entrees or mains.

There'll also be live music on weekends and DJs in case you want to get your dance on.

Open Wed-Sun 10.30am to late.

25 Kennedy Street, Kingston, (02) 6162 2318, salottobar.com

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