Agostinis Italian restaurant opens at East Hotel

From its pink neon sign exclaiming, 'you had me at pizza', to wine on tap and leopard-print booths, Agostinis is reinventing the traditional Italian restaurant.

Located in their family-owned East Hotel, the eatery is the latest creation from siblings Dan and Dion Bisa, replacing the former Ox Eatery and Bar.

Like the rest of the hotel, the design brief for Agostinis was 'fun' and that's exactly what designer Kelly Ross has pulled off. It's slick yet comfortable, with a predominantly pink palette, high-end and detail-oriented furnishings, and imported Italian textiles.

Despite the chic fit-out, Agostinis is truly a family restaurant.

"Being Italian obviously it was about embracing the whole family and having a really great dining experience," says Ross.

"We wanted to fill the gap of parents who have money to spend on good food and good wine and good experiences who have potentially second rate dining experiences because they're eating out with their kids. So we wanted to switch that up and have a great dining experience where the kids are completely embraced and yet it looks or appears something a lot more glamourous, a lot more high end."

With neighbouring bar Joe's dedicated to the Bisa's father, Agostinis is all about their mother Marisa who grew up in northern Italy and moved to Australia with her family for the Snowy Mountains Hydro-electric scheme.

Named after her maiden name, the venue has highly personalised touches, from the custom chandeliers made in the Libran constellation after her star sign, to a mural of a bar Marisa's grandparents owned also named Agostinis, a fact they didn't realise until well after the restaurant had been named. Distressed, hand-dyed rope hanging from the roof represents the handmade pasta that the children from her region would hang out and dry in the sun.

Exuberant chef Francesco Balestrieri has moved into the restaurant from Joe's Bar, creating a menu of traditional and simple Italian dishes, with influence from his own family and the Bisa family.

Everything is made in-house, from the ice cream to the 72 hour pizza dough. And then there's the pizza oven - the largest in Canberra. It fits 14 pizzas at a time and even rotates to make the best use of the heat. The kitchen is open, meaning both the pizza oven and the theatrics of the preparation are on full display.

A must-try on the menu is the frico, a traditional peasant dish from the Friuli region of Italy using up scraps of cheese and potato, roasted into a crunchy and moreish dish. As Dion says, "if mum says she's cooking frico we all turn up."

A specialty behind the bar is the range of Italian-made wines on tap, and winemaker Bryan Martin from Ravensworth Wines has created a unique Beppo's Blend wine exclusive to Agostinis and perfectly matched for Italian food.

East Hotel, 69 Canberra Avenue, Kingston, agostinis.com.au