Walk into any bar or trattoria in the south of Italy and you’re likely to find a bowl of taralli on the table. The crunchy, crumbly and complimentary snack, usually served with a wine or spritz, is an indispensable part of the southern Italian diet. It also adorns the tables and carrara-marble bar at chef Salvatore Giorgio’s new North Melbourne restaurant, Bar Taralli.

It’s the first sign of the legit southern Italian hospitality you’ll get here – along with a warm welcome from the Italian waitstaff dressed in crisp white shirts and ties; and the lively Italian music humming from the speakers. If that’s not enough to transport you to a small Italian village, the 50-year-old lamp – made to look like a Parmigiano Reggiano wheel – on the bar, metre-high bottiglione, and black-and-white photos of Italy lining the walls should do it.

The Errol Street restaurant in the old Sosta space, directly across the road from Manze, is Giorgio’s ode to the rustic flavours and traditions of southern Italian cooking, especially the food of Campania, where his family is from, and Puglia, where his partner, Grazia Fuggiano, is from.

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“When I lived in Puglia I saw how simple everything was, how easygoing it was, and I wanted to do that: simple food, done well and executed with good produce,” says Giorgio, who also opened Bar Bambi and clocked time at Scopri when it first opened 15 years ago.

Rather than serve the Italian-American style dishes found at Bar Bambi or the Piedmontese food Scopri is known for, Giorgio targets four southern regions of Italy – Sicily, Calabria, Puglia and Campania.

There’s Puglian staples like orecchiette with a white pork and beef ragu; fave e cicoria, a creamy purée made here with broad beans and served with mildly bitter sauteed chicory; Neapolitan-style octopus legs, braised then chargrilled and served over a red sauce of capers, olives, garlic and chilli; and spicy Calabrian ’nduja served over a terracotta warmer to keep it soft and spreadable to smother over crusty bread.

There’s also bombette, a Puglian dish of pork neck stuffed with caciocavallo cheese and herbs then wrapped in pancetta and cooked over coals; scialatielli pasta, a short, handcut noodle served with mussels, vongole and prawns from Yarraville’s Clamms Seafood; and spaghetti all’assassina, a crisp, pan-fried pasta dish from Bari, Puglia.

The extensive wine list – curated by Giorgio and Fuggiano – homes in on the volcanic wines of southern Italy, like fiano, falanghina (a zesty white) and aglianico (“a big red, like a shiraz”) plus barolos, barbarescos and nebbiolos from the north.

But you’ll want to finish on an amaro from the dedicated digestivi menu – or an espresso poured from the stovetop moka pot. “When you go to the south, that’s all you get,” says Giorgio. “We don’t drink milk after 11am. This is something I believe in, and I want to stick to it.

There’s an impressive selection of Italian cheeses and desserts including chiacchiere (fried strips of dough) dusted with sugar, but Giorgio is happy for diners to explore the neighbourhood after mains.

“In Melbourne, restaurants often feel like a supermarket – where you have to do this and that. I just want to provide an Italian restaurant with good food and good service. If you want a cappuccino, you can go next door. In Italy, you get a pizza from a pizzeria, and if you want an ice-cream, you go next door to the gelateria. That’s what’s great about coming to Errol Street – I want to support the other businesses in the area, too.”

Bar Taralli
12 Errol Street, North Melbourne
0481 171 955

Hours:
Mon & Tue 5.30pm–10.30pm
Wed to Sun midday–3pm; 5.30pm–10.30pm

bartaralli.com.au
@bar_taralli