The secret’s out about this inconspicuous ‘Italian-ish’ wood-fired Windsor wonder

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Sometimes you find a restaurant, tiny, maybe a bit out of town, not (yet) in all the best eating lists, and everything about it is so glorious you want to yell its brilliance to all and sundry while also keeping it a secret.

Cricca is this wonder, a small thrilling jewel of new Italian-Australian cooking, or “Italian-ish” as the restaurant calls itself, almost inconspicuous in Windsor’s main street shopping plaza.

Set in a shop originally built as a pizza restaurant, complete with 20-year-old wood-fired oven and a brick arched front window, it opened in 2021 and is run by chef Alessio Nogarotto, whose family runs A Chef’s Secret at Berowra Waters.

Nogarotto and head chef Giles Gabutina are longtime friends who met as children at swim school in Cherrybrook. They created Cricca after working at Bentley Restaurant & Bar, where they won the 2019 Nestle Golden Chef Hat together.

Cricca means close friends who share the same interests. On this balmy summer’s eve, chandeliers and candles lighting Cricca’s seven tables and four counter chairs, Nogarotto and Gabutina’s interests are rolling out of the open kitchen to supremely happy diners.

As the wood-fired oven glows, Nogarotto is on the floor, talking to diners about the menu, a short, seasonal and carefully curated list designed for sharing.

The first dish is dill and spice-cured hiramasa kingfish, topped with white star-shaped phlox flowers and zesty pickled kumquat dressing on fermented tomato crisps. It is luscious and bursting with freshness.

Four Sydney rock oysters arrive. Smoky and with a deep flavour after a burst in the 500-degree oven, they are plumply wrapped in house-made pancetta.

Next, pork cheek croquettes, crunchy, juicy orbs dolloped with dusky orange ’nduja mayonnaise and local finger lime, followed by wood-fired bread, a soft puffed bronzed moon of dough that requires only 90 seconds in the oven, such is its heat. Pulled apart to dip in olive oil, and the creamy beauty of charred heirloom tomatoes dressed in roasted tomato oil, it is swoony stuff.

For mains it’s Gabutina’s charcoal barramundi, butchered in-house and dry-aged for four days and cooked over wood coals. Its fat morsels fall delicately apart.

Then come coils of pale olive house-made casarecce pasta, with house pesto and beautifully strong roasted tomato pieces. This comes with a duck fat potato terrine that could be the star dish of the whole night. A golden wedge of layered spud crunch, it glistens like an other-worldly flapjack in a dark orange pool of spicy peperonata.

But then comes dessert. Chocolate shortbread with white chocolate cream, cherry gel and lemon balm is an utter marvel but sweets are led by the baumkuchen, a German tree or spit cake popular in Japan. Made by cooking individual layers of batter, and glazed with honey and burnt orange, burnt leatherwood honey creme fraiche and compressed cherries, it requires hours of work and care in the wood oven.

The resulting slice is a dark, flat, golden orb that is velvety, rich and zinging with deep fruity flavours. Always order this.

Nogarotto, who has Italian and Filipino heritage and grew up in the kitchen of his family’s first restaurant, Fiorenzoni, in Chatswood, has also assembled a good range of Italian and Australian wines.

It is striking, in almost every dish, how he and Gabutina have used the wood-fired oven’s heat and different effects on cooking to create such beautiful dishes.

“I want Cricca to be a constantly evolving hub of food,” he says. “The biggest thing with us is keeping it fresh and exciting, for us and the people who dine with us.”

He is also appreciative of Windsor’s close-knit community, which has endured four major floods in recent years.

“Seeing how that affected the area and how people came together was incredible,” he says. “They’ve been incredibly supportive of us as well. I didn’t think I’d find that kind of community here but Windsor is everything I’ve been looking for. It is such a cool place to be.”