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Vaporetto Bar and Eatery

Gemima Cody
Gemima Cody

A little Italy: Vaporetto's charming front bar.
A little Italy: Vaporetto's charming front bar.Simon Schluter

14/20

Italian$$

Vaporetto, you've already twigged if familiar with Italian water transport, is Hawthorn's crack at Venetian dining. Take another 10 points if that makes you think cicchetti – the sinking city's take on tapas, traditionally knocked back at knock-off time with spritzes.

Here in the Lido Cinema Complex on Glenferrie Road, this new wine bar and eatery has seen east-siders hitting mandarin liqueur-spiked Aperol spritzes and mustardy emmenthal cheese panini for the past two months. That sandwich says much about the aspirations behind the bar. The crustless, gooey-centred sambo spiked with prosciutto and cayenne pepper is modelled after the one at Venice's Harry's Bar – home of the peach bellini and host to history's most distinguished booze hounds. Veterans knew it not as a bar, but a lifestyle.

It's Harry's drink-anytime energy that Europhiles Stephanie Edgerton, David Wickwar, chef Greg Feck and partner Kim Coronica of Crabapple Kitchen have tried to capture, albeit at more accessible prices. Thus: cheap-but-decent Italian wine on tap by the glass, carafe or litre. And cicchetti – warmed olives and Bateman's Bay oysters; porchetta slices dotted with clam mayonnaise like a wrong vitello tonnato – available past last credits for movie debriefs armed with arancini and arneis.

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Prosciutto and emmental toasties with a kick of cayenne.
Prosciutto and emmental toasties with a kick of cayenne.Supplied

To the front you sit at a white marble bar twixt Murano chandeliers and leather stools. Weathered Venetian shutters and a century-old tobacconist's shopfront form the backdrop. A northern Italian bartender is deeply invested in whether you like the sarde in saor, sweet-and-sour sardines sometimes divisive due to their funk. Funky they are, but bright too, the cured fillets heaped onto oiled toast with soft pickled onions and a jumble of parsley, pinenuts and goji berries for tartness and crunch.

People have quickly picked up on how-to-Venice. Well-heeled silver foxes are catching the double break of their senior's cinema discount and spritz happy hour – a tenner from 5-7pm. Behind them, a couple is on late-afternoon espressos while a solo drinker – always Harry's best cared-for guests – gets an over-pour to finish a bottle of chianti.

And the Italo-party now has phase two, a split-level dining room where Feck is bolstering the snacks with pastas, gussied-up polentas and steaks. Across the board, the one-time chef of Richmond Hill Cafe and Larder and Sapore spins pretty and creative rather than dogmatically classic.

Spanner crab and chilli pop against a squid ink polenta.
Spanner crab and chilli pop against a squid ink polenta.Simon Schluter
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Veneto, fish heartland, with a love of wet risottos, and some lesser-used spices, means your negroni is spiked with cinnamon and star anise; oysters are sloshed with a quince and shallot vinegar and a play on risotto Buranello, made with rockling and lots of parsley, is lighter and looser than you're used to (and better with a little extra salt).

Dishes are pretty to look at. Sweet lobes of spanner crab and rounds of green chilli pop against a squid ink-stained polenta that has a husky rather than popcorn-y resonance. Burnish-edged shallot petals sprout from a beet and onion puree, some filled with goat's curd, others a salty prosciutto soup. Unusual, especially billed as salad, but the flavours work.

A little more Italian simplicity would sometimes do well. Beef tartare jumbled with pickled shimeji mushrooms, earthy mushroom puree and discs of raw trumpeter is a bit of a sweet smoosh.

Go-to dish: Bigoli noodles with duck, mandarin and asiago.
Go-to dish: Bigoli noodles with duck, mandarin and asiago.Simon Schluter

But often what reads complicated eats thankfully straight. The bigoli, say, an udon-thick noodle billed with duck, dried mandarin and Asiago, like a pasta-based duck a l'orange, registers like a fairly bright ragu, the citrus barely pronounced. Bonus points for bringing the leftover sauce in a pan with oiled toasts as sponges.

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The bitter leaf salad is your friend amid the festival of rich pastas and steaks. We're defeated come the dark, raisin-studded doughnuts with orange-infused custard.

But if the menu wants for lightness, the dining room could use less. The bright lights, bouncy patterns in mustards and blue, with a backdrop of an Astroturfed courtyard and overhead speakers blasting a mystery mix of Phil Collins, Demis Roussos and other karaoke go-tos kinda break the spell. (Ditto your otherwise excellent waiter's need to know if every bite is OK.)

Fritole - raisin doughnuts with custard.
Fritole - raisin doughnuts with custard.Simon Schluter

For our money, that front bar, all softness and snacks is still Vaporetto's ace in the hole. But what a card to have up your sleeve.

THE LOWDOWN
Pro tip
Schedule post-cinema snacking.
Go-to dish
The bigoli with duck, mandarin and asiago – bright ragu with noodle bounce.
Like this?
Hit Heartattack and Vine for cicchetti and vermouth, 329 Lygon Street, Carlton.

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Gemima CodyGemima Cody is former chief restaurant critic for The Age and Good Food.

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