Matteo opens in Double Bay
Stylish Italian restaurant Matteo is coming to Double Bay.
It’s the brainchild of Eddie Levy (Lobo Plantation), Adam Abrams (Darlo Country Club, The Island) and Limoncello’s former chef, Orazio D’Elia.
It will open later this year on the site once occupied by Limoncello, where D'Elia worked when he first came to Sydney from Italy.
The menu will have pizzas, pasta and all sorts of simple dishes. But the highlight will be the salt-encrusted snapper.
“We like theatre, so when we do the snapper, it'll be cracked open at your table like in southern Italy,” Abrams told Broadsheet..
D’Elia, a proud southern Italian, was just as effusive. “It's a doppia lievitazione, we prove it a second time so… it's very light. You can smash two pizzas and sleep fine,” D’Elia told Broadsheet.
His menu will be Amalfi-style featuring parsley-infused scialatielli which is the long, square-sided pasta, in addition to forest mushrooms and ricotta. There will also be buffalo mozzarella on lemon leaves.
The plan is to have Matteo open in August, serving aperitivo in the front courtyard.
And the drinks will flow.
“We'll do it every afternoon. Free snacks with a drink,” Abrams told Broadsheet.
What kind of drinks? They are looking at providing guests with Italian cocktails on top of a selection of different spritzes. And to keep up the atmosphere, there’ll be a DJ too playing music that D’Elia says will be there to get everyone up and moving,
“The music will be for everyone. Stuff that will make families and kids happy,” says D’Elia.
The plan is to create the same sort of vibe that Limoncello had, a place full of kids every Sunday afternoon.
Interior designer Ian Nessick has come in to give the place stylish fitout. There will be stained, stone tables and a long marble bench at the bar and the venue has been rendered and repainted to look like a Greek villa.
by Leon Gettler, July 4th 2017
