The Perth restaurant serving a sauce as black as vengeance

They never stopped. They didn’t waste a move, as in no aimless dithering of blank-eyed confusion. When they walked, they walked briskly with purpose. They knew about the food they were serving.

Yet despite all this professionalism, there was time for jokes and one liners from the kitchen to the floor crew and from the waiters to each other. Laughter rang out a lot. There was none of that dour, slouching ennui one often gets from young waitstaff. Both of us, seasoned restaurant goers, couldn’t take our eyes off these guys. Neither of us had seen a hospo team work as cohesively.

My buddy commented that she had not seen a floor crew so happy to be at work, so motivated to serve and so enthusiastic to back up their team mates. This is not hyperbole. It was genuinely remarkable to watch.

Every restaurateur wants a team like this. So few get it.

So, what the hell’s going on at No Mafia then? The answer soon.

No Mafia is a strange name for a bar restaurant, but somehow reassuring in Northbridge where crime is mostly disorganised: meth heads randomly shouting at their demons and muscling up to unsuspecting punters, and barely sentient drunks trying their hand, dismally at it turns out, at bag snatching from al fresco diners as they run past outdoor tables all the while screaming at imagined enemies. We saw that happen one evening last year.

No Mafia is an oasis of cool in Northbridge’s demented but mostly joyous street theatre of the absurd. It fits the bill for Perth’s main “entertainment” precinct. It is loud, colourful and fun. Its music is aimed at a young demographic and its menu is short, appealing and well cooked. So too the compact wine list.

We kicked off with a few of their inexpensive antipasti.

Roman arancini is two big and well crusted deep fried tubular rice cakes with a surprise molten centre of cheese. Nice. Not too sure what the difference is between a “Roman” arancini and one from, say, Sicily where it was invented, but this one was more solid and chewy and meaty. Nothing wrong with that. In fact, it beats the typical arancini style one often gets: gluey, sticky and so dense it can bend space time. It sat on a silky puddle of nicely garlicky aioli. It was powerful too. At last, an aioli with enough garlic to ward off a bitey Transylvanian. Thank you.

Burrata has become a ubiquity wrapped in a cliché, cloaked in predictability. This squishy-centred, very young cheese ball is on most menus in town. It has become very ho-hum. I wouldn’t have bothered, but my dining partner is a vegetarian and she insisted. Good call as it turned out. The kitchen did what every seller of burrata should do … left it alone.

It came to the table in all its alabaster purity sitting on a perky bed of vermillion coloured beetroot puree and looking like a Carpaccio painting. (Vittorio Carpaccio, by the way, was the early renaissance Italian artist whose name was co-opted in the 1960s by a Venetian chef to name a thinly sliced raw beef dish. Why? Carpaccio, also a Venetian had a predilection for using deep red against creamy white colours in his masterpieces).

Anyhoo, the beetroot puree was acidic and perky and erupting with just-picked flavour. The wintry, dark vegetal tastes one associates with beetroot had been enlivened by the puree’s perfect acidic seasoning. You should order this dish.

Mortadella with gnocco fritto was a smashing dish. Gnocco fritto are small squares of deep fried pizza dough which puff up gloriously and are dredged in salt. They are a spot-on counterpoint to thin slices of slippery, fatty mortadella. On the side was a well-dressed salad of rucola, sprinkled with the finest grating of pecorino cheese. Very tasty.

Oh, and before we go on, the answer to why No Mafia has an extraordinary, high functioning floor crew? Just a guess, but leadership starts from the top and owners Emma Ferguson and Dan Morris (who also own Balthazar in the city) are brilliant leaders. Neither of them was there the night we reviewed, and the place didn’t miss a beat. That’s no small achievement. Their other secret weapon is ebullient floor boss and Tuscany native, Silvia Sciarri. She’s an absolute weapon and leads her team with humour and eyes in the back of her head.

The special on the night we reviewed was squid ink pastas (casarecce) with cuttlefish. It had a slight hum of chilli, the cuttlefish chunks were tender, the ink sauce was as black as vengeance, buttery and properly saline. Other pastas on the list (there are no main dishes) included maccheroni with pork sausage, rosemary and celery and pappardelle with braised duck and mushrooms. Gluten free pastas are available for those with fashionable ailments. It was very, very good.

Our other pasta read well but didn’t deliver. Prawn butter with bottarga suggests a massive umami pay day. Bottarga is the salted, dried roe of grey mullet and it usually packs the sort of punch that will sit you back. Not this time. There was just not enough of it. The butter sauce lacked prawn flavour and the whole thing was under seasoned, under sauced and a bit stodgy. Bugger. It was tasty enough, just not up the standard of the rest of the cooking we enjoyed at No Mafia.

Don’t let this put you off. No Mafia is a brilliant destination restaurant with superb service, good wines, great cooking, good pricing and charisma. Yes, charisma. It’s fairly bursting with personality and brio.