To enter the basement at Pellegrino 2000, Andy Tyson, Mikey Clift and Dan Pepperell’s original Italian restaurant, you have to descend a staircase beneath a glowing red neon sign. For Neptune’s Grotto, the downstairs neighbour of Clam Bar (the trio’s steak and seafood spot in the CBD), the entrance is similarly low-key. Once you find that sizzling neon sign, prepare to pass by it, find the door with a brass seahorse-shaped handle, and enter a new world.

“You go through this subtle entrance and come into a buzzy room with horseshoe booths and a marble bar all revolving around a statue of Neptune,” Tyson tells Broadsheet. “It really feels like you’ve found your destination; you know you’re in the right place.”

Like Pellegrino 2000, Italian is the focus at Neptune’s Grotto, but this time chefs Clift and Pepperrell have zeroed in on the rich, decadent cuisine of northern Italy, particularly Emilia-Romagna, the home of prosciutto di parma and Parmigiano Reggiano.

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“In the north of Italy, ingredients like butter, wheat and egg yolks are typically used,” Tyson says. “We’re making our own pasta, incorporating egg yolk to give it that beautiful yellow tinge.”

The menu features mains like cotoletta alla Bolognese, an opulent veal dish with prosciutto and cream; plus five pastas, including tortellini filled with artichoke and truffle and tossed in brown butter; and a classic gramigna alla salsiccia (a squiggly pasta dish with sausage), which Tyson says he hasn’t seen in Sydney. It’s a labour of love and delicate handwork: the pasta chefs start at 5am, spending eight hours mixing, rolling and cutting pasta shapes for lunch and dinner service.

With Clam Bar just upstairs, it would have been easy to replicate the wine list for Neptune’s Grotto, but Tyson relishes the challenge of creating something unique every time the group opens a new venue. While Clam Bar’s menu offers an even split of French and Australian wines, Neptune’s Grotto is skewed towards Italian drops from specific regions (with the north amply represented) as well as a modest Australian selection.

“I like to focus on the breadth within a region rather than across a country, so it’s more terroir-driven,” Tyson says. “I think it’s incredible you can take the same grape grown in the same region and the diversity is like day and night. We’re trying to show the diversity of great Italian reds.”

A visit to one of Tyson, Clift and Pepperell’s venues feels transportive in a way that few restaurants in Sydney can match. They’ve clearly mastered Italian cuisine and the New-York-style steakhouse, which raises the question, will they ever open a venue celebrating something closer to home?

“We’ve talked about this quite a bit. It’s harder to do an Australian venue because there’s nothing concrete in terms of Australian restaurant concepts that fit, except maybe a pub. But the short answer is yes, sometime down the line, we will.”

Neptune's Grotto
Corner Young Street and Loftus Lane
(02) 9167 6667

Hours
Mon to Thu 12pm–11pm
Fri to Sat 12pm–12am

neptunesgrotto.com