Sarti Restaurant Bar

Good Food Guide Review

The Age Good Food Guide 2009

A prodigal chef finally settling down at his own cool upstairs hideaway and exciting modern Italian food: Sarti is one of Melbourne dining’s recent success stories.

The menu offers two different faces as the peasant and the pioneer in chef Riccardo Momesso do battle. To start, the 16 little ‘stuzzichini’ choices read like an explosion of ideas: think earthy house-cured ‘capocollo’ served with stuffed zucchini flowers and a dice of dried tomato; or, more innovative, calamari with tartare foam or slices of whiting crumbed with amaretti.

Some dishes can divide diners into warring tribes: is there a better partner for the whiting than the vanilla and citrus dressing with chocolate-mint oil? Is the Marsala reduction too sweet for a pot of sausage hunks and wet polenta? Pasta and mains see a return to more peasant-style cooking in dishes like chestnut tagliatelle with oxtail ragu; or pale, delicate rabbit, its leg stuffed with a farce of porcini, liver and heart and the loin neatly rolled, all served on farro cooked in rabbit gravy.

Desserts are a forte; the pistachio panna cotta with caramel salted popcorn a signature. While we’d like to see wines by-the-glass poured at the table, the service overall is switched-on.

15.5 / 20

One Chef’s Hat