Bizzarri 2
299 Toorak Rd, South Yarra
Melbourne VIC
Ph: 03 9826 2277

When you’ve been reviewing restaurants for thirty years as The Hungry Hinch and you get invited to yet another restaurant opening with the rent-a-crowd, some canapés, and usually a pink or green or purple drink concoction proffered at the door you are entitled to think: Am I getting jaded?

Recently I succumbed to an invite to yet another restaurant opening where yet another hopeful restaurateur was heading along that financial boulevard of broken hearts or of broken dinner plates.

But this wasn’t some novice dreamer. Tony Bizzarri owned, for years, an eponymous and well-liked restaurant in Toorak. Bizzarri 2 – also known as Restaurant 2 – is in the Como Centre in South Yarra on the same site where half a dozen other places have opened, crashed and burned.

Places like: Soho, Venetian, Avenue. All sank like a soufflé when somebody opens the oven door.

A hint that this may be different came at the packed Opening Night party. They served real food! There were exquisite tender coils of calamari, crab claws, prawns with a hint of Thailand wrapped in coconut.

We were so impressed that Mrs. Nosebag and I plus Mike ‘Up there Cazaly’ Brady stayed behind after the freeloaders left and had dinner. In fact, I was so impressed that I took Mrs. Nosebag back there a few days later for another dinner.

And the very first dish I ordered that time confirmed that this was a place for serious dining. Not heavy ‘peasant’ Italian food but the new Italy with other European (and even Asian) influences. All guided by Head Chef Marco Lori who has been cooking his distinctive Italian style for more than a decade at places like Moretti and Becco.

We ordered the antipasto which on the menu is blandly listed as ‘a selection of Italian starters’.  Well, for starters I had the most unusual version of prosciutto with the obligatory rock melon or cantaloupe.  The melon came as a slim glass of juice. Balanced on top was a stripe of prosciutto wrapped tightly around a breadstick.

No wonder super-critic Stephen Downes  started his review with ‘WOW! That is probably my best response to Bizzarri 2. Whatever has happened to Toorak Road? Here’s a place that serves modern, Latin-leaning tucker as good as the best Melbourne can muster.’ He gave it 18 out of 20.

Mrs. Nosebag had a calamari salad for entrée  with a variety of leaves and a Japanese horseradish mayonnaise. That went down a  treat with someone who would use a tube of wasabi as toothpaste if she could get away with it.

The antipasto on a stand was ordered at the two next tables. Will try that next time. The seared Tom Cooper seared smoked salmon sounded good along with their own beetroot cured salmon.

For a main I had a moist, fluffy, genuine, Tasmanian lobster omelette. Mrs N. had a pan seared tuna served on braised spring vegetables with the fish just more than seared.

One tasty nibble I couldn’t identify turned out to be crisped seaweed. Loved it. Got my iodine fix for the week.

Bizzarri 2 has a structural problem that predecessors couldn’t solve. It’s on two levels. One opening on to Toorak Road and the other into the Como Centre. The temptation is to make it upmarket on one level and a bistro café and bikkies joint at street level. Doesn’t work. Sends the wrong message. Now there is a long, welcoming, bar downstairs and a hint of the latte set but the space is still dominated by the dark wood floor and soft gunmetal walls of a restaurant. Frankly, I prefer a downstairs banquette to the upstairs version.

I noticed in Epicure than  John Lethlean almost grudgingly said  it will  ‘do reasonably well on it’s Toorak Road corner’.

I think it will do better than that. They won’t need to go looking for a Bizzarri 3 but one niggly point. Decide on a name. It’s either  Restaurant 2 or Bizzarri 2 or Restaurant Two.  Personally I’d go for the eponymous Bizzarri 2. Tony, you’ve earned it.

 December 28, 2006