The Famed Spaghetti Machiavelli Returns to a New Potts Point Dining Room

Giovanna Toppi was a Sydney pasta maven and the founder of now-closed CBD institution Machiavelli, a power dining room that, since 1988, pulled in A-listers and politicians with its classic Italian menu. Portraits of prime ministers, CEOs and media personalities lined the walls – it was slick, upscale and a go-to for suits. Now its star dish returns, to a much more casual dining room in a quiet corner of Potts Point.

Giovanna’s daughter Paola Toppi – who cooked alongside her mother for three decades – is reviving a famed, original recipe: Spaghetti Machiavelli.

The bowl of garlicky butter-slicked spaghetti is swirled with prawns, mushrooms and chilli – and it was the dish to order at the original dining room. It now hits Pasta Shop, which opens on Friday April 17 in the old Sonora site.

The dishes of Mexico City have been swapped for an 11-part list of pasta. “The Spaghetti Machiavelli at Pasta Shop is the original dish I created back in 1988,” Paola says. “Over the years, the recipe changed and instead was used with tagliatelle, but we’re taking it back to the original.”

While the recipe remains unchanged, gone is the higher price point of the famed venue – where bowls pushed $40. Pasta Shop has been designed to be approachable, with dried pasta arriving from Italy to form the base of a menu where everything is $30 or under. That includes a lemony fusilli carrying delicate crab meat, generous serves of traditional lasagne, fat tubes of rigatoni sauced up with a hot vodka number, and gnocchi that’s baked and gorgonzola-cheesy.

There are also house-made polpette (meatballs that arrive as a trio swimming in a deep red sauce), slabs of focaccia and salads aplenty. Plus, tiramisu and cannoli for dessert. A mix of pre-batched Maybe Sammy cocktails (lychee Martinis and Negronis, Margaritas and an Old Fashioned) sit alongside an all-Italian list of wine, beer and non-alcs.

A takeaway window is open with the full menu, deliverable across Sydney’s eastern suburbs.

Pasta Shop
37 Bayswater Road, Potts Point

Hours:
Wed 5pm–9pm
Thu to Sun 11.30am–3pm, 5pm–9pm

@pastashopsydney