Icon review: Stefano's serves slow food for fast times

It's 30 years since Stefano de Pieri opened the creaky door to the cellars of Mildura's Grand Hotel and started serving Italian food filtered through a north-west Victorian lens.

Back then, there was no Murray River pink salt in the grocer. Local olive oil was a challenge. Country-town coffee was stuck in the "cup of chino" era and beer was trucked in from major brewers. If you inquired in the bottle shop about fiano, a fruity white wine from southern Italy, you'd be fobbed off with a woody local chardonnay.

De Pieri wasn't a chef, though he'd grown up on a farm in the Veneto region in Italy's north-east: fresh, local produce at the centre of life was merely normal. He emigrated to Melbourne in 1974 and studied politics before working as a ministerial adviser in state government.

After marrying Donata Carrazza in 1991, the voluble Italian moved to her home town of Mildura. An agricultural hub built on irrigation, the Sunraysia region grew a lot of food and wine grapes, but didn't exactly seem enamoured of dining.

In 1992, de Pieri started to change that. His father-in-law, Don Carrazza, had worked at the Grand Hotel as a bell-boy in the 1950s. Now he was its proprietor. One day, de Pieri found himself in the cellar, clearing away cobwebs, pushing aside beer kegs, letting a vision percolate.

Before long, he was welcoming diners into the warren of subterranean rooms. The initial idea was for a rustic wine bar, a shaving of prosciutto, a hunk of parmigiano, a bottle of pinot grigio purchased upstairs.

But Victoria wasn't ready: people wanted tablecloths, a wine list, a dinner reservation – and Stefano's obliged. The Age Good Food Guide's inaugural editor, Claude Forell, was charmed by the restaurant in the mid-1990s, and the underground hideaway was suddenly very famous when its namesake became the runaway star of foodie TV show A Gondola on the Murray, which aired in more than 60 countries from 1999.

But when Stefano's – 550 kilometres by road from Melbourne or an 80-minute flight in a propeller plane – was named restaurant of the year in the 2003 Good Food Guide, many people were still confounded by the idea of a multicourse meal without a written menu. And when they were served yabbies (a freshwater native shellfish more commonly associated with farm kids and dirt bikes than fine dining) – well!

But Stefano's had a modest clarity: the model might be European (a genial stop for wayfarers and burghers), but the food was Australian (why not unmuddy the reputation of a local shellfish?).

Then, as now, your meal was likely to begin with springy focaccia with a dipping dish of extra virgin olive oil. The bread was fresh, salt-touched and – I find out – laced with pork fat for extra richness.

Next, probably soup. On a recent visit, it was silky, yellow capsicum with little nuggets of yabby.

Sformato – an Italian souffle – is a cheesy edifice which subsides into smooth, sweet, onion cream.

Pasta is cooked al dente and tossed with a poised veal ragu.

The Murray cod is utterly simple and unspeakably good: seared in butter and sage, then briefly baked so it flakes on the plate into snowy shards.

Dessert might mean orange polenta cake and a panna cotta so jiggly it will make you giggly.

Everything is cooked perfectly and presented proudly, but it's humble and unshowy. Portions are moderate but ample. Service is unfussy: tables generally arrive all at once at 7pm, and the tiny kitchen keeps courses synchronised.

The long wine list, lovingly annotated by de Pieri, continues the work of introducing Australia to grapes such as lagrein, piedirosso and the restaurateur's extraordinary collection of barolo, a premium, north-Italian red.

The Victorian food scene has changed beyond measure over three decades, with not inconsiderable credit due to de Pieri, who went on to run a bakery, brewery and cafe in Mildura, promote the sale of pink salt, extol the joys of olive oil and work with the wine-making Chalmers family to promote Italian varietals.

Along the way, Stefano's restaurant hasn't altered much. Produce of the season is sourced and served that day for people who want a bit of comfort and art to accompany their calories.

It's slow food for fast times and everything about it is delicious.

Vibe: Simple, but excellent Italian set menu in a country cellar

Go-to dish: Rigatoni with ragu (part of a $120 tasting menu)

Drinks: Specialising in Italian wines and varietals, with extraordinary barolo list

Cost: $240 for two, excluding drinks

This review was originally published in Good Weekend magazine