Dreaming Of Italy

The Age

Tuesday September 11, 2007

John Lethlean

COOKING shortcuts unacceptable at the price; cost-cutting on produce; outmoded waiting practices. For anybody who reads a variety of restaurant reviews in this town, it may be time to present an alternative view on Society, the new restaurant at the top of Bourke Street that somehow manages to trade off the rather absurd suggestion it was established in 1932.

The connection between the Society of today and the Society that traded on this site for many years seems tenuous, with myriad businesses run by different companies and individuals having passed through the landlord's rent book - trading under at least three different names - in the years since building. Original owner Reno Codognotto gave up being a restaurateur in 1982. Republique, Rhumbarellas, The Society Cafe - suddenly Society is back: a great idea but one in which spin has raced ahead of reality and beyond any real claim on trading continuity and august provenance such as that made by The Florentino, for example, across the road.

I like simple, traditional Italian food very, very much. I ate the best simple Italian meal of my life in August. In Italy. It's been suggested recently that eating in a traditional Italian restaurant in situ will almost certainly disappoint and cost three times as much as the equivalent experience in Melbourne. And that Society would put most such Italian restaurants in that country to shame.

Let me email you the menu of a trattoria in Milan that oozes character, respects the city's food culture, puts produce of exceptional quality on the table cooked sublimely, and charges less than most Melbourne mid-range restaurants. And if you drink Italian wine, well, it's a bargain.

And I ate in several other traditional places - at similar prices - that knocked my socks off.

Yes, there's bad food everywhere, but to suggest, as has happened recently, that restaurants in Italy as good as Society would be rare is actually rather amusing. I reckon restaurants as lacklustre as Society would be the exception.

The place, taken over by the DiMattina family (which owns several other eateries here and interstate, including Blue Train at Southgate) looks excellent following a serious refurbishment, with different areas affording different atmospheres. For a weekday lunch, however, I believe you should try to get yourself as close to Bourke Street as possible, in the natural light, with a passing parade on the footpath. Here the floor is tiled and the black laminate tables are horridly bare (prices are the same all over the building) but it's where things feel more alive. I had to make two requests for a table change to get out of the dark den at the rear, which would have been fine for an assignation, but that wasn't on the agenda.

Society's menu is a mix of old-school and more contemporary ideas, but not a lot of innovation.

Our waiter brought lightweight bread slices with some cured black olives, oil and balsamic. This idea that bread is a pre-dinner nibble seems all wrong; reinforced by the subsequent removal of what was left, and the sideplates. I asked for more bread with the entrees; again, the same thing. After entrees, bread and side plates were removed. Is there anything wrong with leaving bread on a table until after savoury dishes are dispensed with? Apparently so.

Conversely, however, the service for filling water glasses was exemplary.

Let me be specific about the problems encountered at the Lygon Street end of Bourke Street.

Pan-seared medallions of yellow fin tuna ($18) varied in their cooking degree, from "just" to almost "completely through". In either case, the tuna was of a modest standard, the portion generous. The fish sat on a bed of diced tomato, a dry bread-like wafer, sprigs and leaves of fresh oregano, a sweet pomegranate "coulis" and small, whole black olives, stones intact. This sort of lazy, "throw-it-on-the-plate cooking for a bit of decoration" could cost the restaurant a law suit if a tooth were broken.

Crumbed brains ($16) served with a "caperberry cream sauce" were fine; the sauce was, as far as I could tell, more a lemon cream with large caperberries with long stalks added to the plate at the end, and a wad of pea shoots speckled with balsamic syrup. Pea sprouts have no place on a plate in a good restaurant.

Linguine alle vongole ($18) was all baby clam and grit (more teeth problems) with an incredibly modest quantity of pasta and a lot of dried chilli, garlic and chopped parsley. More pasta, less grit and it might have worked.

The roast half duck came with more of those un-pitted black olives (ouch), mashed potato and a very sweet Marsala-spiked sauce ($35). Oddly, the duck - smothered in plenty of glossy sauce - had virtually none of the sweet-gamey flavour you associate with duck, and its texture was not lively. The sage garnish had no obvious connection with the dish.

And the same might be said of a sprig of rosemary that came with the "ossobuco alla Milanese"(sic) - $29. A minor problem, really.

Osso buco is a veal dish although sadly what many butchers in Melbourne label "osso buco" is shin beef. That's fine if you choose it and cook it, knowing it's not veal but a redder, darker meat from an older animal fed on something other than milk. But for $29, I don't want two pieces of shin beef in a tomato-ish gravy full of large pieces of carrot and celery on faintly saffron-coloured rice masquerading as osso buco alla Milanese: I want some veal and a risotto that sings of saffron and rich bone marrow. And how about a little gremolata? Is it that hard?

The zabaglione ($13) was pretty good, although it had a sticky dark paste at the bottom of the conical presentation glass I couldn't identify. It came with biscuits and a panforte-style wafer of fruity/nutty something. Oh, and a strawberry.

A cassata-style semifreddo with a layer of harder pistachio ice-cream was served with glace cherries and dried fig in red syrup ($10.50). It was particularly sweet.

Three entrees, two mains, two desserts, one side salad ($9) and three modest glasses of wine cost $173.

If, as we have been led to believe elsewhere, this was at the upper end of dining expectation for Italy (not to mention Melbourne), you'd probably holiday elsewhere.

Trust me, it's not.

As we signed the bill, Nino Rota's love theme scored for The Godfather played in the background. It was another reminder Lygon Street is not far away at all.

Society City

Not one of our better Italian restaurants. 12/20

Where: 23-29 Bourke Street, city, 9639 2044

Food: Cost: typical small dish $18, typical main $30

Wine list: Useable but hardly thrilling

Corkage: By arrangement, $15 a bottle

We drank: O'Leary Walker 2006 riesling (Clare Valley) $7.50 a glass

Service: Fair

Value: Poor

Owners: Paul DiMattina and family

Chef: Giuseppe Uva

Vegetarian: One entree, two pastas, one risotto

Outdoors: Yes, footpath

Wheelchairs: No

Parking: Street or paid

Cards: AE DC MC V Eftpos

Hours: Breakfast Mon-Fri 7.30am-11.30am, Sat 9am-midday; Mon-Sat midday-3.30pm and 5-11pm

Website: www.societyrestaurant.com

Score: 19: Unacceptable. 1011: Just OK, some shortcomings. 12: Fair. 13:Getting there. 14: Recommended. 15: Good. 16: Really good. 17: Truly excellent. 18: Outstanding. 1920: Approaching perfection, Victoria's best.We were wrong

In my review of the Society restaurant on September 11, I claimed that the osso buco was shin beef instead of shin veal. I accept the restaurant owners' statement that the meat was veal and apologise for any distress I may have caused.

© 2007 The Age

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