Go for gold: Why you need this new old restaurant’s sunny pasta dish in your life

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And the award for Yellowest Dish in Melbourne goes to … the prawn and saffron spaghettini ($36) at Mister Bianco in Kew. If you didn’t know this was a distinction worth celebrating, I’m right there with you.

Until the bowl was placed in front of me at the new location of Joe Vargetto’s southern Italian mainstay, I’d never specifically considered yellow as a desirable attribute in my food. But here we were, eating a dish so simple my partner called it “like butter pasta from the kid’s menu, but for adults”.

Spaghettini, with the particular sproing of a good house-made pasta, is doused in saffron-scented butter, the saffron lending that depth of yellowness that you can see and also taste, and perfectly cooked prawns, out of their shells and popping with freshness. It’s one of those dishes that stays with you, in part because it’s so elementary in its presentation and taste.

Ever since Vargetto opened the original location of Mister Bianco in 2010, the restaurant has been beloved for this type of deceptively simple cooking, in which high-quality ingredients are highlighted but never overwhelmed, and the clever twist is in the details. I suspect people also loved the original room, a small nearby shopfront with white walls and white tablecloths that felt classic in all the right ways.

This iteration, best known as the former home of George Calombaris’ Hellenic Republic, is more than twice the size of the original, which closed in September just ahead of its 13th birthday.

The new restaurant is divided into three spaces: the main dining room, an upstairs function space, and a yet-to-open cocktail bar, Bianchetto. The look is dramatically different from the original, leaning into maximalism with amber glass dividers, cascading fabrics, and staff dressed in multicoloured shirts.

If you loved the original, you’ll likely love this version as well. The food and wine are as good as ever.

There’s a wood-fired oven turning out focaccia ($7) and sfincione ($11), a thick Sicilian pizza-adjacent snack, and an array of small plates that are slightly heartier than antipasti.

There are lightly fried zucchini flowers drizzled with a hint of truffle honey ($28), and meaty sardines over a sweet agrodolce with pine nuts and green olives ($23). It would be easy to make a meal here of bread and various nibbles.

But for those with a lustier appetite, there’s a range of pasta dishes, including that spaghettini, entrees and big hunks of meat, ranging from a brazenly rich beef cheek dish ($48) over a silken cauliflower puree, to a 400g rib-eye ($58), to a porchetta for two ($84) that’s been slow-cooked then grilled and comes with a choice of two sides.

And speaking of sides, one of the best dishes here is one of roasted baby beets and turnips ($16) which are cooked to fudgy perfection then doused with crunchy hazelnuts, beet greens and soft roasted garlic cloves.

Expansion can be hard, and the place where Mister Bianco’s growing pains are most obvious is in the realm of service. Even as my former restaurant-manager senses kicked in, it is hard to tell how this floor staff is organised, but it appears as though one very adept senior server is responsible for a huge section of tables, backed up by a support staff who float throughout the whole room, taking orders and clearing plates only when asked. This means that you’ll get excellent service until the place fills up, then almost no service at all.

I’m not exaggerating when I report that on one particularly busy Saturday, we were done with the savoury portion of our meal in less than an hour; then spent a whole subsequent hour contemplating and then giving up on the rumoured cheese cart; ordered dessert by hollering at a passing staff member; and then waited 40 minutes for that dessert to appear. It was delicious: a perfect chocolate fondant ($19), bitter and sweet, accompanied by a creamy pistachio gelato. Then it took another 20 minutes to procure our bill, and more time to get someone to let us pay it.

The professionalism of those senior waiters makes me think that someone here is taking service seriously, so I do hope they figure out a system more appropriate for a room of this size. I also hope that when the cocktail bar opens in February (drinks are said to be overseen by accomplished bartender Orlando Marzo), it produces some cocktails that are more savoury, or at least not quite as perfumed as the current offering.

All of that said, if you loved the original, you’ll likely love this version as well. The food and wine – the Italian whites in particular – are as good as ever. The service will even out as the staff grows into this much bigger space. And if you never knew you needed a bright yellow dinner in your life, Mister Bianco is the place to find out.