Bar Carolina

Bar Carolina is from Joe Mammone (the restaurateur behind Il Bacaro and Sarti), designer Chris Connell and engineer Michael Amore. They transformed the former Carousel Ice Cream store into a little slice of Venice, with terrazzo floors out front and textural floorboards out back, handmade leadlights in an azure tint, and custom-made steelwork by Amore.

Mammone imported a woodfire Josper oven from Spain, and most of the mains a blast in it, such as the wild barramundi encrusted in salt and herbs, which comes wrapped in a little parcel that steams it in its own juice. A 700-gram rib-eye, aged for 60 days, is served simply with a scoop of seeded mustard.

If you’re not feeling meaty, pasta’s rolled out in-house. We recommend the tagliolino con crostacei, long flat ribbons of noodles with Moreton Bay bugs, porcini mushrooms and dried chilli on top. The most photogenic dish, however, is a perfect sphere of tiramisu – seemingly beamed in from the future – full of coffee, savoiardi, chocolate and mascarpone.

You could also just linger over a plateful of aged prosciutto and stracciatella, with a bottle of fiano.