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Rosa's Kitchen

Larissa Dubecki
Larissa Dubecki

The go-to dish at Rosa's Kitchen? Ravioli Trapani.
The go-to dish at Rosa's Kitchen? Ravioli Trapani.Eddie Jim

14/20

Italian$$

Google has lost track of Rosa Mitchell. Understandably - the self-taught Italian cook has moved more times over the past few years than your average arts undergraduate - but it's nonetheless a bummer when you realise your dining compadres are six city blocks away, outside the Flinders Lane address Rosa's Kitchen called home between 2007 and 2010.

Looking on the bright side, at least they weren't in Williamstown, where she spent most of 2011 at a pub with all the soul of Pyongyang - a classic case of the right food in the wrong place. But Rosa's Kitchen, returned to the city and tucked down a laneway at its northern edge, is a triumphant case of the right food in the right place.

Third time lucky? I reckon, going by the buzz this humble trattoria has been generating. She's attracted some heavyweight backers from the MoVida group, and there's more of a wine focus than ever before - maitre d' Lazlo Evenhuis (ex-Crimean) has put together a smart and snappy list that's either home-grown Italian or here-grown Italian - but its peasant soul remains uncorrupted.

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The dining room has echoes of Rosa's Flinders Lane industrial-chic heyday.
The dining room has echoes of Rosa's Flinders Lane industrial-chic heyday.Eddie Jim

Follow the neon sign down Punch Lane to a shopfront with three quasi-ecclesiastical windows. There's no time for designer schmance: the fit-out has echoes of Rosa's Flinders Lane industrial-chic heyday. It's not quite as indie cool, but the straightforwardness of the wooden tables, concrete floors and blackboard menus doesn't oversell the simple integrity of the food.

It's cooking that binds to the Italian obsessions about produce and flavour. If its prima facie simplicity powers the myth that all Italian cooking is like this, the only practical response is: if only. Rosa's absence left a gaping hole in the city for accessible, home-style cooking and going by the crowds I'm not the only one who regretted its absence.

The antipasti, four pastas and five mains are chalked on the blackboards. The rest of the menu is verbal, delivered by a snappy group of staff who know how to do their job without interrupting the flow of fun.

The team at Rosa's Kitchen (from L to R): Lazlo Evenhuis, Rosa Mitchell and Lucy David.
The team at Rosa's Kitchen (from L to R): Lazlo Evenhuis, Rosa Mitchell and Lucy David.Eddie Jim
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You really ought to start with the antipasti, a sympathetically curated bunch of things such as toasty fried ricotta, thin slices of red onion frittata, fried eggplant, some salami with a hit of fennel, a little salad of barley and tomato. It's orthodox and delicious. There are chewy swatches of calamari, done southern-style in a puddle of chilli-tingling olive oil, and fat sardines, butterflied and sandwiched around a mix of garlic, parsley and breadcrumbs. It's simple, yes; prosaic, no.

Mitchell's house-made pasta tolerates no fussification. Fat pillows of ricotta- and herb-stuffed ravioli with a light tomato and almond pesto - Trapani-style - is $25 well spent. Orecchiette goes Sicilian, like the chef, with cauliflower, saffron, anchovies and pine nuts, gritty breadcrumbs doing good things over the top. A beef shin ragout on penne is underwhelming - too little meat, too much tomato as though it has been bumped up to meet demand.

And, yes, it's the kind of place where things regularly run out. Depending on your bent this is either annoying or reassuring. I missed out on the whole red mullet but the fat pan-fried flathead tails Mitchell substituted were the best fish eating I've done in a long time, the simple herby salad with shallots and the ripest cherry tomatoes from her farm near Yandoit (which also supplied the peppers, herbs, salad veg, and silverbeet) just the ticket to go with it.

The beef cotoletta is a very thin, very crisp schnitzel with brilliant-red swatches of mild pepper and green olives on the side. Like most of the plates here, there's a wedge of lemon nestling on the side to spark it up a notch. It's soulful and warming on the first cold night of the year. I also liked the big-flavoured veal tongue, sliced like ham, dressed only in some good-quality oil with boiled small potatoes skin-on tossed in salsa verde.

No one gets out of here without trying the cannoli. Or at least they shouldn't. It's very good.

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Rosa's Kitchen realises just about every ideal the committed Italophile could harbour. Even if you're not, it's the kind of place that provides a tonic for the over-conceptualised modern world.

Welcome back, Rosa. Now please stay put.

THE LOW-DOWN
The best bit Rosa's back
The worst bit Order fast - they run out of things
Go-to dish Ravioli Trapani, $25
Wine list Excellent and affordable, split between Italians and local Italian varietals
We drank Feudo Arancio Grillo (Ragusa, Sicily) $9.50/$46
Vegetarian Antipasto, a couple of snacks and starters and one main
Dietary GF catered for
Bookings Yes
Wheelchairs Yes
Noise Warm and convivial
Service Great
Value Good
Outdoors No
Parking Street or paid

Twitter: @LarissaDubecki

How we score
Of 20 points, 10 are awarded for food, five for service, three for ambience, two for wow factor.

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12 Reasonable 13 Good if not great 14 Solid and enjoyable 15 Very good 16 Capable of greatness 17 Special 18 Exceptional 19 Extraordinary 20 Perfection

Restaurants are reviewed again for The Age Good Food Guide and scores may vary.

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Larissa DubeckiLarissa Dubecki is a writer and reviewer.

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