Paul Serafin was doing sandwiches before they were cool. The hospitality veteran opened sandwich chain Stax – defined by its Philadelphia-style hoagies – in the CBD more than a decade ago before launching New York-Jewish-style deli Flying Fig, which drew fast fans for its pastrami on rye and Reuben sandwiches, in North Adelaide in 2016 (he sold the business in 2022).
Now he’s stepping away from American-style sandwiches to dip into his own heritage with Osteria Polpo, a traditional northern Italian-style restaurant inspired by the cicchetti bars of Venice as well as the home-style cooking he grew up eating. “Like risi e bisi [rice and peas] and bigoli in salsa [thick, wholewheat spaghetti coated with a simple anchovy and onion sauce] – this is all food I grew up with,” says Serafin.
“The other thing we’re doing is cicchetti – little savoury snacks on a platter. They’re very common around the Venice area. You have your spritz and you have a cicchetto – a lot of people do it pre-dinner, they go have an appetiser before they go home for a meal. We’re just keeping it nice and casual, with a cracking wine list.”
The bar and dining room is opening on East Terrace next month, overlooking Victoria Park, in a site that’s also occupied by private members club the Public Schools Club (public in the British sense, which actually means private). But the two venues aren’t connected. (The heritage-listed building was also once the residence of Adelaide-born physicist Sir William Lawrence Bragg and his dad Sir William Henry Bragg who together won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1915.)
“To be honest I was umming and ahhing but I said, ‘I’ll go have a look at the site’. And as soon as I walked in, it had that real European, old-world feel about it,” says Serafin. “It’s got the timber, it’s got the two-toned wall with a chair-rail in the middle that you see in a lot of these old restaurants in Europe. It just had a really good feel about it.”
Designer Patrick Caroscio of Design Think (who also designed Flying Fig Deli) is retaining the heritage feel of the space with dark timber, forest green and brass trimmings. “That warm, old, Italian restaurant look,” says Serafin.
A couple of display fridges will house pre-prepared, traditional cicchetti bites that you’d find in Venetian aperitivo bars, such as baccala mantecato (whipped salted cod) with polenta, and crostini with sarde in saor (sardines in a vinegar and onion dressing) or stracciatella and honey.
Elsewhere the extensive menu will lean on comforting, home-style food like chicken liver risotto; pecorino-crusted sardines with chilli, raisins and pine nuts; and beef shin ravioli with bone marrow, 48-month Parmigiano-Reggiano and burnt butter.
Larger plates will include hearty and nourishing dishes like charred octopus with asparagus cream and samphire; rolled pork loin with fennel, cavolo nero and beans; and charred romanesco with radicchio and white bean puree. There’ll also be classic desserts like tiramisu, panna cotta, and the traditional Tuscan end to a meal: a nip of sweet Vin Santo and a biscotti.
Cocktails also lean Italian – they include a Negroni, Americano and Campari Shakerato, plus a range of spritzes – while the wine list will home in on northern Italian drops from Veneto, Tuscany and Piedmont alongside approachable red, whites and pinks from all over South Australia.
Osteria Polpo will open at 207 East Terrace, Adelaide (on the corner of East Terrace and Carrington Street) in May.
