What do you get when you cross sublime Italian cuisine with a magnificent wine list and one of the most majestic dining rooms in all of Melbourne? Why Neil Perry’s restaurant Rosetta, of course – a welcome addition to Crown Casino’s stable of eateries and a place I’d happily visit every week of my life.

It’s Sunday as I write this, and 10 days have passed since K’s decadent birthday lunch at Rosetta – a four-and-a-half-hour bonanza that goes down in history as one of the booziest and most exhilarating lunches we’ve experienced anywhere.

Truly great restaurant dining, as I’ve written about here, is a harmonious amalgam of many disparate elements. The food, wine and service must be exceptional – that goes without saying. But beyond these non-negotiables, memorable meals possess a certain magical je ne sais quoi, a whisper of something intangible that is acutely pleasurable. These are restaurants whose polished good cheer is so ingrained in the fabric of the place that its airborne joie de vivre strikes you immediately upon entering. The experience flies by in a delicious blur, leaving you with a nostalgic throb in your chest and a host of mouth-watering memories.

At least, that’s what great restaurant dining feels like to me.

K and I have shared many a languid lunch at Rosetta since it opened in late 2012. There have been long boozy lunches in winter and even boozier lunches in spring. My mother and I lunched there one arctic Wednesday last September when we were visiting from Brisbane (happily, for me at least, the two-hour plane flight is no longer necessary).

Notice I’m using the word lunch here. Rosetta isn’t a cheap restaurant, but it does have one of the best value weekday lunch specials in all of Melbourne. For the bargain price of $60, you get a choice of three bountiful courses and a glass of wine. It’s $50 for two courses. A couple can have a splendid time, in other words, for $100.

K and I – well, we spent a little more than that. Birthdays only come around once a year, you know? Here’s how our awesome lunch unfolded:

1 p.m.

We arrive at Crown and hot-foot it through Rosetta’s heavy glass door. The lofty dining room expands before us, a triumph of opulent femininity. Extravagant chandeliers dangle from the high decorative ceiling. There’s marble and velvet at every turn, a wall of windows leading out to the glamorous alfresco terrace with glimpses of the Yarra beyond. It’s seriously uplifting, the sort of place you could easily while away four-and-a-half hours…

Seated at our linen-topped table, we order a round of aperitifs: a Negroni for the birthday boy and a champagne cocktail spiked with orange bitters for me. The cocktails are expertly balanced and strong. A mischievous, ‘this-is-going-to-be-fun’ type grin hijacks K’s face.

Whistles wet, our gaze drops to Perry’s menu. It’s a tribute to his travels through regional Italy, covering everything from antipasto to chargrilled meats, with a sizeable detour via K’s one true love (other than moi, of course) – pasta.

Fortunately, the three-course lunch special is comprised of savoury courses, freeing you up to head out afterwards for gelato if the mood so strikes you.

For a moment, I’m overcome by the ghost of Italian lunches past.

Antipasto, pasta dish, main – how many times have K and I experienced this sure-fire recipe for happiness in Venice and Florence and Rome?

Here at Rosetta, there’s a choice of two dishes for each course. K and I order one of each. Just as my vision is starting to blur from that excellent cocktail, the bread basket arrives. I choose the rosemary focaccia, a salty, moreish delight of a thing that marries beautifully with the puddle of fruity Italian olive oil.

Lunch ordered, aperitivo imbibed: it’s time, clearly, to savour the wine list.

There are a plethora of Italian gems, many of which are hard to find in Australia. Our waiter sends over the sommelier, a deeply knowledgeable and endearingly humble Japanese man called Masa whom Mum and I had the pleasure of dealing with in September. He’s the sort of sommelier who speaks of rugged Sicilian vineyards with such passion and singularity that you can actually taste the volcanic sun-baked soil (Masa writes for a Japanese wine publication, no less!) We chat with him for a very pleasurable 10 minutes, debating the merits of Chianti versus Montepulciano, toing and froing between the regions of Sicily and Sardinia. Finally, we decide on a bottle of 2014 Cos Pithos Rosso for $130.

For the record, this dusty, highly-perfumed red wine is a highlight of our lunch. A blend of Nero d’Avola and Frappato from Vittoria in Sicily, it blends a delicate floral note with a saline minerality – a result of the volcanic and limestone soils in which it is grown.

It tastes like a meaty dill pickle has been slathered with black cherry jam and left to air in a fragrant, ocean-spritzed lavender field.

After a couple of drinks it does, anyway. A mesmerising and deeply flavourful wine that pairs beautifully with our upcoming pasta course.

Masa, I salute you.

Around 1.45 p.m.

We’ve let the kitchen know we’re looking to linger, so our entrées arrive just before two. My house-made ricotta with wagyu bresaola, pickled mushrooms and radicchio embodies the earthiness of autumn. The ricotta is delicate and soft, the mushrooms piquant and the radicchio bitter yet grounding. It’s a lovely dish that is best savoured slowly.

K’s mixed crudo of tuna, kingfish and cured ocean trout is brilliantly fresh and light, a smart choice given the richness of the courses to come.

Included in the lunch special is a glass of red or white wine (Italian varietals grown in Australia), or a Peroni beer. I’d love to wax lyrical about the glass of 2016 Chalmers Vermentino from Heathcote that I order, but the memory has been sucked from my brain. Notes, Antonia. Always take notes!

2.15 p.m-ish

We’re onto the bottle of red now, and I’ve whipped out my notebook to ensure I don’t make the same mistake twice. Our tasting notes are coming thick and fast.

It’s vegetative, K muses. It starts wet but finishes dry.

Meat juice! I cry. Pickled meat juice!

Studying the other patrons is a bunch of fun, too. Beside us, an ageing captain of industry – the well-fed, signet ring-wearing type – dines with a woman who may or may not be his wife. A tuft of chest hair escapes his shirt as he claps his platinum credit card to the payWave machine. At the large round table nearby, there’s a business deal going down – only none of the socially-awkward suits have ever met before. There’s a lot of throat-clearing and silent wine sipping. During one especially dire exchange, the youngest guy actually blushes.

It’s all grist for the writer’s mill.

Our pasta course lands on the table. My strozzapretti with pecorino and pepper is swimming in molten cheese. It’s as if Rosetta’s la sfoglina (dedicated pasta chef) melted a hefty block of pecorino onto the chewy, al dente pasta ribbons. For a cheese-lover, it’s absolute bliss.

K’s bigoli with minced duck ragu is powerfully gamey and rich. It’s delicious at first, but so potent that it irrevocably infuses our wine. After a while, all I can taste in the glass is gamey God damn meat juice! Our waiter brings us fresh glasses but it’s too late: the gaminess is airborne.

First World problems.

In the vicinity of 3 p.m.

Suitably boozy and full, we decide to relocate to the outdoor terrace for some fresh air. Shockingly, it’s the first time I’ve ever set foot out here. In my many visits to Rosetta, the weather has always been too abysmal to ever consider dining alfresco.

Not today, friends. K and I commandeer two white wicker chairs and bask in the mid-afternoon sunshine, interspersing our reverie with sips of meaty red wine.

We return indoors for mains: slow-cooked snapper with an intense prawn bisque sauce for me, and quail saltimbocca for the blissed-out birthday boy. My fish is slightly overcooked, but otherwise the dish is rich with seafood-y goodness. K devours his saltimbocca before I can even snatch a bite.

4 p.m. onwards

A blissed out hour and a half on the terrace follows, where we bask in the well-earned glory of being the last to leave.

As I’ve written about here, K and I view this fact as the ultimate accomplishment. Why? Come 4 o’clock, the pace of even the busiest restaurant slows, leaving you with an hour or so of unhurried bliss – time to savour dessert and contemplate ordering that second digestif.

I succumb to the temptations of the rather-too-creamy tiramisu, while K receives a complimentary slice of chocolate cake layered with raspberry for his birthday. He orders a Montenegro and we sink slowly beneath the waves, content in the knowledge that this birthday lunch is one for the history books.

I’ll leave you, friends, with this heartening and suitably-blurry image of Rosetta’s grappa trolley.

Until next week! 🙂

xo

Featured image via – www.delicious.com.au