Ricardo's
99 Dundas Place, Albert Park
Melbourne, Victoria
03 9699 5536

About 25 years ago I had a Hinch Hunch. Albert Park was about to become the new South Yarra. Real estate prices would zoom, restaurants would blossom and people would flock to the great fruit and vegie shop, the real butcher, and the bread shop.

There was already a great bar and restaurant in the heritage listed Biltmore Hotel with it’s grand entrance and fading pink façade.  Back then you could have bought the whole building for about $800,000.  I thought about it but didn’t quite have the moolah.

Instead, I opted for a breathtakingly restored, architect-designed award-winning  three storey house – one of only two in Albert Park. Bought it for $280,000. Sold it a couple of years later for $225,000 --  and the guy who bought it from me on-sold it a year later for $400,000. I always was good at picking real estate trends.

But despite that money burn I always maintained a love affair with the suburb. I’d go back to the fruit shop to buy papaya and mangoes and back to a restaurant known as Franky’s.

Well, Franky’s is now Ricardo’s and with a string of restaurants and cafes along Bridport Street – and especially it’s extension into Victoria Avenue – Ricardo’s more than holds its own.

It’s great to walk into a packed Italian restaurant  and know you are going to get a great Italian meal.  And with the first taste of the pasta you know it is made on the premises.  It’s the difference between eating Beluga caviar or settling for lumpfish eggs.

These days people are so used to dried and brittle spaghetti sticks at the supermarket that you almost forget what real spaghetti tastes like.

It’s a massive, old-fashioned menu at Ricardo’s  with a dozen different pasta and risotto dishes and  seven ‘principali’ dishes ranging from chicken to lamb, veal to garlic prawns.

All the pasta dishes come in  entrée or main course sizes and the prices are cheap: entrees from $12.50 to  $19.50. Main-sized portions from  $16.50 to $24.50. 

My favourites on a couple of visits  were the Penne Calabrese – spicy penne with salami, black olives, fresh tomato and  chilli --  and the garlic prawns with a ‘pinch of napoli’ on a bed of risotto  without cream.

The veal scaloppine is good  but go for the ‘piccantina’, the  slightly spiced lemon with white wine, tomato and a touch of chilli.   The marsala version, even without cream, is probably too sweet for most tastes.

And I like the way the menu says  ‘all main meals (excluding pasta)  are served with vegetables – whatever  chef is preparing at the time’.  There is a touch of fun  about this place. The waiters are veterans.  The menu has cryptic messages alongside some dishes like ‘It’s real good’  and  ‘YUM!’

 (The ‘real good’ dish is just that. Crispy fried polenta pieces  topped with  sautéed spinach and brie cheese and then grilled.)

 And an eclectic  blackboard wine list ranges from something Italian to Grange.

At the end of a big meal, and despite feeling full I was talked into trying the cassata. Made on the premises. And it was worth making room for.

It’s not a big place and when we left there were people queuing outside so it is  wise to book.