Packing in the punters
Cafe Sopra at Fratelli Fresh in Alexandria is packing in the punters with its kind of Italian, sort of Australian food.
It can be tough to get a table at Cafe Sopra in Alexandria.
It has been a huge few weeks for the restaurant industry, with awards season in full swing. Prizes have been given for hottest restaurant, best restaurant, best chef, hottest chef, best waiter and so on, with lots of winners, some losers and an unnerving amount of angst about what it all means.
Hearts have been broken, tantrums thrown. There's more soap in the restaurant industry than at a Lux factory at times.
Who knows if all the winners are the right ones; still all publicity is good publicity. Even losing hats earns publicity, and publicity gets people through the doors.
The best way for restaurants to rise above the mania of awards is to be busy. If a restaurant is busy, it's giving people what they want, hat or no hat.
The Cafe Sopra restaurants within the Fratelli Fresh chain of providores, for instance, are not the sort of places that are ever going to attract two or three hats or near-perfect scores out of 10 or 20.
But approach the newest of these outlets, in what used to be the Buckland Hotel, at lunchtime, and the startling reality of its popularity is instantly apparent.
Outside, people mill about in the sunshine, holding numbers, waiting for a table. Inside, every table is jam-packed, an eclectic array of diners - mums with prams, magazine mavens toppling about in stupid shoes, husband-and-wife food editors, retirees in packs of six, guys in cyclewear - all competing for space.
A buzz fills the room that has been split into several sections, so that by the time you get a seat and your (rather harried) waitress asks if you'd like a glass of rose, which happens to be on special for $6 a glass, you might just jump at the offer.
Shaved Brussels sprout salad.
In some respects, this latest incarnation of Cafe Sopra, owned by restaurateur Barry McDonald, is the group's most interesting yet. It has replaced a previous outlet on nearby Danks St, Waterloo, which was the original Fratelli Fresh.
Unlike there, this new venue contains not just the restaurant and an upmarket grocer but a bottle shop, pizzeria and wine bar. There's parking, too, on Belmont St, near the venue.
The menu will be reassuringly familiar to anyone who has visited Sopra in one of its other locations. It's kind of Italian, in a sort of Australian sense, offering mostly pastas, salads, pizzas, and a handful of mains with an Italian accent.
Linguine with lemon, chilli and pangrattato.
You would be hard pressed to find a better assortment of salads than those featured here. Dip in and out of options that include Sicilian tomatoes with bocconcini and basil ($18), Parma prosciutto, roast pear and bocconcini ($22), and wagyu bresaola with gala apple, toasted almonds, reggiano and balsamic ($20).
A shaved brussels sprouts salad ($20) is spectacular, the crisp leaves mixed with slivers of oyster mushroom, pancetta, reggiano and balsamic, a pair of beautifully poached eggs on top adding to a perfectly amalgamated whole.
A pickled beetroot salad ($18) comes with more beautifully poached eggs. The beetroot could be more peppery but there's plenty of fresh mesclun for health.
Smoked ham, mozzarella and funghi pizza.
The pastas run from linguine with lemon, chilli and pangrattato ($18) to lamb ragu with chilli, rosemary and gnochetti ($20) and spaghetti alla carbonara ($20).
For mains, there's bistecca with anchovy butter ($29), say, or whole baked trout with mint or marjoram ($26).
The volumes the kitchen, headed by chef Brendan Wade, are pumping out are huge and some of the pasta I've eaten here - the linguine with pangrattato, say - may have been left in the pot a moment too long.
But not to quibble, for the flavours are right and the amounts are generous.
The pizza oven too will need to be run in a bit longer for bases to be as crisp and charred as they need. The pizzas aren't huge but there's some good ones to be had - try smoked ham and funghi ($18) or n'duja salami with tomato and mozzarella ($18).
For a casual venue, Sopra has an excellent, nearly exclusively Italian wine list priced reasonably, and desserts like mascarpone pannacotta with campari citrus ($14.50) that round off the package.
Mascarpone and vanilla pannacotta with campari citrus.
So you could say that Sopra really needs no publicity. But hell, even critics want to go where the people are.
CAFE SOPRA AT FRATELLI PARADISO ALEXANDRIA
52 Mitchell Rd, Alexandria
Phone: 8399 4777
Web: fratellifresh.com.au
Food: Italian/contemporary
Service: Rushed but pleasant
Highlight: Great food and pumping vibe
Lowlight: The crush to get a table
Rating: 7/10
Source: The Herald Sun, 7 September 2013
