PASTA PINNACLE

Alberto Fava and Andreas Papadakis are the perfectionists behind Melbourne restaurant Tipo 00.

STINGING NETTLE, the barbed and bristled herb, might have a fearsome reputation, but it tastes exquisite once vanquished in boiling water. “You can find it everywhere in Italy, even on the side of the road,” says Ferrara-born chef Alberto Fava, who has long deployed the wild ingredient in dishes at Tipo 00, Melbourne’s primo pasta bar.

The flowering plant makes an appearance in Fava’s recipes on these pages in a creamy risotto. “My grandmother would blanch it, roughly chop it and pair it with pasta,” Fava says, “but this risotto recipe is a more refined way to incorporate it.”

Rustic yet refined describes Tipo 00 as well. The revered restaurant, which opened on Little Bourke Street in 2014, is the handiwork of Fava, fellow chef Andreas Papadakis and sommelier Luke Skidmore. Eating here is an education in pasta. Diners select from conchiglie, casarecce and tagliolini, while Fava and Papadakis prepare the floury delights from their open kitchen. “Everyone in the world loves pasta,” says Athens-born Papadakis, who then admits that some early commentators voiced scepticism about opening a pasta bar in these carb-phobic times. Fortunately, they were proved wrong.

In May, team Tipo 00 unveiled a sibling restaurant adjacent to the original. With whitewashed brick walls, hand-painted floors and leather banquettes, Osteria Ilaria is still Italian-inflected, but with a broader vocabulary. That means dishes such as Spanish anchovies, baby octopus and duck with nettle gnocchi; the nettle is a constant.

Some dedicated clients have been swinging between the two eateries, eager to sample from both. “We only have one pasta on the menu in the new place, so we’ve had regulars coming in for drinks and appetisers at Tipo and dinner at Ilaria,” says Papadakis. It’s the Melbourne version of la dolce vita.