Diving into an established all-male Italian kitchen as the new head chef could be daunting (especially as a half-English, half-Welsh woman) but Naomi Lowry has taken it in her stride. She’s maintained the menu’s confident Southern Italian focus, notching it up with Sardinian Fregola ($27/$35) resplendent with perfectly cooked cuttlefish, calamari, prawns and mussels, and topped with a generous helping of bottarga.
I spent 24-hours in Orange last weekend taking in some key events at the 2015 Orange Wine Festival. The highlight of my visit was the Barrel to Bottle Chardonnay masterclass at my favourite winery in the region: De Salis Wines. Winemaker Charlie Svenson was incredibly candid and generous with both his winemaking techniques, and with pouring his museum release wines.
With the upsurge of enthusiasm for pizza certified Napoli, it’s easy to lose sight of pizza styles popular across the rest of Italy. Add that Nicola Piteo slid his restaurant into an existing Italian spot, keeping the original name, and you get some idea of how his outstanding pizza has largely flown under the radar.
What type of person would pass up the opportunity to ingest copious amounts of vodka, wine and caviar whilst listening to Dan Aykroyd ramble on about the significance of Crystal Skulls and how they somehow relate to large-scale quantities of vodka and en masse marketing techniques?
Last week I took some time out of my busy weekend to check out the much-lauded ACME. And yes, while the Macaroni, Pig’s Head, Egg Yolk ($18) is undeniably delicious, you might be left wondering: where’s the rest of it?