38 Chairs expands
It’s been six years since Thirty Eight Chairs opened in South Yarra.
At the time, as the name suggests, it seated 38.
The business has been building with owner Gino Forlano taking over the shopfront next door last year. And after a month-long renovation, the popular Italian bistro now seats 85.
Forlano has got rid of the red-and-white checked paper in the bread bowls, the garlic braids and the signature hanging logs of salami which are now stored in the restaurant’s new meat-ageing fridge.
The feel is very much Italian.
He has created a new space done up in charcoal which carries various shades when it’s lit up by the natural light that floods in through the street-facing floor-to-ceiling windows. He has put dark Italian marble on the walls and created banquettes made of Italian leather.
Even the curtain covering the back wall is Amalfi Coast-made which makes sense because Forlano’s family comes from that coastal area of southern Italy.
Naturally, it means the menu is dominated by that style of cooking. There’s plenty of seafood.
“It feels like being in a contemporary restaurant in Milan,” Forlano told Broadsheet.
“We don’t want to be called a fine-dining room, but we want to be recognised for the details.
“We still want people to clean the plates with the bread.”
And many of the recipes are from Forlano’s nonna.
That includes the pasta itself, which is made fresh daily. It is served soft, not al dente.
“It’s very soft. People think al dente because they have been miseducated, but the pasta that is al dente has been made the day before,” Forlano told Broadsheet.
The most popular pasta on the menu is linguine with mussels, clams, scallops, prawns, scampi, garlic, chilli and pea puree. And the cavatelli with braised octopus is also becoming a hit.
by Leon Gettler, February 16th 2017.
