Sicilian-style loaded focaccia is how dinner starts at Kew’s new Mister Bianco 2.0

Italian restaurants are often pigeonholed as palaces of pizza and pasta, but Mister Bianco chef-patron Joseph Vargetto is going against the grain with his newly relocated Kew restaurant. Although he’s installed a large wood-fired oven, he declares: “We’re not doing the P word – pizza.”

Instead, he’s offering sfincione, a hefty topped focaccia that’s Sicily’s answer to pizza.

“If you travel up and down Italy, everyone has their version of pizza,” says Vargetto, whose family hails from Sicily.

At the rebooted Mister Bianco, which opened on November 23 just 500 metres from the original, the sfincione is made with rectangles of thick and spongy focaccia, baked in the wood-fired oven and loaded with three different toppings. There’s smoked mozzarella and anchovy, a simple tomato-chilli-mozzarella number, and the off-piste caramelised onion with scamorza.

The bubbling cheesy bread is the perfect introduction to the homely, Sicilian-accented cooking that Vargetto is pursuing. Think eggplant cotoletta, sardines agrodolce, and semolina-dusted school prawns.

Other dishes reflect Vargetto’s time working in Italy’s north. Piadina, a filled flatbread from Emilia-Romagna, has been reconfigured as tortelloni with the same fillings commonly found in the folded sandwich: squacquerone cheese, rocket and prosciutto.

“They’re both from the same region, so it works well,” says Vargetto.

The wood-fired oven is joined by a grill and fire pit for the two-person porchetta that heroes the menu, plus grilled fish, duck breast, steaks and more.

The 80-seat restaurant occupies part of what many people will remember as George Calombaris’s Hellenic Republic Kew, but with the thatched ceiling gone, it’s nearly unrecognisable. Vargetto filled 12 skips with the ceiling cane and other materials stripped from the space.

Moving his neighbourhood restaurant after 13 years, Vargetto says he wanted to achieve a more spacious feel without losing the intimacy of the original High Street site. A roving cheese trolley Vargetto was given by his mother and the flames of the wood grill inject atmosphere, as do amber-coloured glass dividers throughout the room.

“They remind me of the glass panels in my parents’ house in the ’70s,” says Vargetto. “It’s a clash between the lovely warm effects of the old world but [it’s] new, sleek, very refined.”

Next week, he hopes to open adjoining cocktail bar Bianchetto, with star bartender Orlando Marzo writing the drinks list.

Open Wed-Sat noon-2.45pm, 5.30pm-late

26-28 Cotham Road, Kew, misterbianco.com.au