For cousins Edoardo Perlo and Stefano De Biasi, opening Salt Meats Cheese in Cronulla is like going home. The pair created their first Salt Meats Cheese provedore in Alexandria in 2012 (now closed), four years after moving to Australia from Italy’s Liguria, a coastal region near the border of France known as the Italian Riviera.

“There’s a lot about Cronulla that reminds us of home,” says Perlo. “It’s the families, the tight community, the proximity to the sea. We like to open in places where we can make an impact on the community, and when the opportunity came about to open in this beautiful space, we took it.”

Salt Meats Cheese has taken over a dramatic, whitewashed Art Deco building originally occupied by the Commonwealth Bank. The duo have married the geometric, balanced lines of the 1930’s era of architecture with a modern interpretation of an Italian seaside town complete with louvered picture windows and fishing basket-style light fixtures.

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There are now five Salt Meats Cheese venues in NSW and three in Queensland, which Perlo admits makes it tough for them to maintain that small-scale local ethos the brand was born from. “It’s getting harder for sure and there will be a limit to how many [venues] we can do and still have that family vibe,” he says.

“It’s important we’re not [styled] like a burger joint [chain] where production is centralised. We make almost everything in house, and even though the menus from shop-to-shop are similar, 15 per cent of the food is based on where we’re located. For example, Cronulla has a bigger seafood focus,” he says.

That equates to blue swimmer crab served with cherry tomatoes, zucchini, garlic and chilli twisted through ribbons of tagliolini; and house-smoked ocean trout in a salad of fennel, pomegranate and white cabbage in a black sesame and lemon dressing. Like Salt Meats Cheese’s other locations, Cronulla has a large woodfire pizza oven that pumps out everything from margheritas to more creative pizzas like the delicate tartufo, made with mushrooms, gorgonzola dolce and finished with truffle oil.

The windows and outdoor seating make the Cronulla venue a good spot to while away summer afternoons, drink in hand. The wine list is a succinct variety of Italian, Australian and New Zealand reds, whites and roses with some biodynamic drops available. The cocktail list is split into sours, spritzes and a handful of classics with an Italian twist.

Expansion for Salt Meats Cheese has been rapid, and there’s talk of three new venues for this year, including one in the northern beaches suburb of Dee Why, a rooftop bar above the Circular Quay venue and a restaurant at Brisbane’s West Village. The pair clearly don’t like sitting still for too long. “We don’t want to open a shop every day. Maybe every three months or so,” Perlo says laughing.

Salt Meats Cheese
66-70 Cronulla Street, Cronulla

Hours:
Daily 11am–10pm

saltmeatscheese.com.au

This article first appeared on Broadsheet on September 20, 2018. Menu items may have changed since publication.