Fans of the very excellent Mr Liquor's Dirty Italian Disco pop-up and Pinbone will let out a joyous whoop with the news Mike Eggert is spearheading Totti's, the restaurant at The Royal, the recently reopened Bondi Road corner pub. He’s joined by ex-Rockpool fine-dining chef Khan Danis, and together they will serve a menu of woodfired meats, pastas, Italian cocktails and good times.

The 185-seat eatery is at the back of the circa 1907 no-frills pub and is scheduled to open in early to mid December.

Hospitality giant Merivale (Bar Topa, Coogee Pavilion, Fred’s, among many more) bought the venue in 2017 (for a reported $30 million) and reopened it in September, keeping the front bar fairly non-descript. Eggert says it’s a different story at the back.

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“It looks fucking awesome,” he told Broadsheet. “It’s really beautiful and minimalist. It has two spaces, one of which is a big courtyard. [Merivale CEO] Justin [Hemmes] craned in two big, old olive trees, like 50 years old. There are also lots of trees and the kitchen is open so you can see us. And then you go through beautiful doors where there’s a woodfired bread oven and lots of natural light because they’ve put in sunroofs that run the length of the room. It’s an amazing oasis.”

Totti's will have a similar casual fun vibe to Eggert’s former Tennyson Hotel restaurant (Jemma Whiteman, the other half of Dirty Disco and Pinbone won’t be involved, she’s now at Lankan Filling Station) but will be more like a classic, approachable pub where you wouldn’t feel you were being too fancy if you stopped by twice in one week.

Eggert says Danis is the lead on the kitchen but “at the moment we’re collaborating – it’s a mashup”, and the food is an evolution of what was happening at Dirty Italian Disco.

Danis is an industry veteran with more than 30 years of experience and who is regarded as one of the best wood-fired chefs in the country. “He was [chef] Neil Perry’s right-hand man. He was at Rockpool, Rockpool Bar & Grill and Rosetta,” he says. “We work together well and bounce off each other; it’s a nice ying and yang. People used to know him as being hardcore, a little Gordon Ramsay-esque, but he’s not like that anymore. He’s not Genghis Khan and he’s not Mother Teresa – he’s somewhere in between.”

Bread will be must-get. Made to order and cooked in the woodfire oven, the big flatbreads (the size of pizzas) will come to the table steamy hot so punters can tear them apart and eat with house-made charcuterie, pickled fish such as sardines, stracciatella and seasonal fruit.

The opening menu will include six pastas handmade in-house – perhaps milk-braised pork with rigatoni, spaghetti bolognaise, lasagne – as well as whole fish, big steaks, small steaks and schnitzels cooked in the Josper charcoal grill.

There will be stacks of sides (including the corn polenta, a Dirty Disco fave), as well as tiramisu and Neapolitan ice-cream sandwiches. Like the front bar, the drinks list reflects Sydney’s current preference for natural, minimal-intervention wines.

And the name? “Totti’s – we just made it up. It’s not Italian but sounds genuine, but we’re not Italian either.”

Totti's is slated to open at The Royal in early to mid December.

merivale.com/venues/theroyal