A good ‘family restaurant’ delivers more than kiddie-proof food, high chairs and chips with everything. It imposes a frame of mind where it doesn’t matter so much what wine goes with what dish or whether the sea salt is from Normande or even what you wear
A good ‘family restaurant’ delivers more than kiddie-proof food, high chairs and chips with everything. It imposes a frame of mind where it doesn’t matter so much what wine goes with what dish or whether the sea salt is from Normande or even what you wear.
It can be an emancipating experience to dine in a restaurant where, because these things don’t matter, one gets back to the reasons for which one actually dines out – relaxing, slowing the brain, socialising in a real way.
The well-delivered family restaurant experience is demotic and altogether different from the high church experience, where the expectation of greatness keeps one vigilant for its absence. This is often hard work. One wants things to perform so well in a ‘serious’ restaurant that disappointment is often closer the surface than in a family restaurant where if it isn’t just so – “well, stuff happens”.
Of course, if the food is awful and the service second rate, these distinctions are somewhat academic. A bad restaurant is a bad restaurant.
This reviewer does not naturally gravitate toward family restaurants. Small children do not belong in restaurants, despite the modern parent’s increasing and fashionable desire to impose their offspring on others at restaurants. Family restaurants are, to use the vernacular, not my scene.
Which gives you something of an idea of the regard I hold for Savini Restaurant in Mount Lawley, when I say it is thoroughly enjoyable and highly recommended.
Savini is a large, family-style Italian restaurant with pictures on the menu to explain the different shapes of pasta. It serves icecream sundaes and spaghetti bolognaise.
It isn’t licensed – which immediately sorts out the customers from the restaurant goers. And it offers no-nonsense service which, while not charming, is crisply businesslike and punctilious.
It has a wood-fired oven from which a range of pizzas and wood fired meat dishes are offered.
The waiter delivered two menus to the table, which was confusing at first until it was explained one was for specials, the other was the regular menu, which was even more confusing as both menus looked permanent to my eye. We flipped from one to the other and chose several dishes from each menu.
The calamari grigliati ($12.50/$17.50) was superb. The entrée size was a huge serving of finely sliced, fried squid rings as tender as bare feet on a pebbly road. They were perfectly cooked. The thick seafood sauce which accompanied the rings was dense and oily and chunky with chopped capers.
The ravioli aragosta ($15.50/$19.50) was billed as a ravioli of crayfish and king prawn in a tomato, cognac and cream sauce. It was a huge serving, curiously piled into a small, breakfast-style bowl, which made it difficult to eat without sending tsunamis of cream sauce onto the tablecloth. It was piping hot. The pasta parcels were well cooked.
The sauce was creamy, robust and in your face, while managing not to taste of much, and the flavours of the filling was difficult to discern under the onslaught of the sauce. It was an honest rendition of a dish which could have done with a few less ingredients.
Savini allows the customer to mix and match pasta sauces with a range of pasta shapes, a terrific idea which makes one wonder why other restaurants of this ilk haven’t followed suit.
A main course of spinach and ricotta ravioli in napoletana sauce ($10.50) was a case in point. Again, the quality of the pasta and the filling shone through and, because the sauce was simple and unadorned, this dish really worked. The tomato-based sauce was exquisite – fresh and full of zing – with none of the tell tale tin can or muddy processed flavours one often associates with napoletana sauces in less reputable Italian cafés. It was an enormous serving.
A costoletta di vitello ($22.50) was classically Italian. Two small veal T-bones had been marinated in oil, lemon and rosemary and then banged in the wood-fire oven. It was served on a huge, colourful oval platter with a large garden salad (sliced orange garnish included) and accompanied by a side dish of excellently undercooked steamed vegetables including beans, potato and baby squash. The vegies were crisp and full of flavour. The salad leaves had more crunch than an abs class. The veal was too overdone for my liking, but it had retained much of its moisture and was sweet and juicy in the mouth.
An insalata mista ($6.50) was crammed with crisp lettuce, watercress, cucumber, sliced raw mushroom and quartered tomatoes. As with the earlier pasta dish, there was a huge amount of salad crammed into a tiny bowl. Consequently, any moves to serve the salad resulted in it erupting over the table.
The tiramisu was terrific, but the kitchen at Savini kicked an own goal with the presentation. Can anyone explain why a kitchen would take a well-made tiramisu and plate it up smothered in cheap, supermarket chocolate topping and a quarter slice of orange jammed into its creamy cap? It beggars belief.
The compulsion to go a few ingredients too far seems to be the Savini way.
That said, Savini is unbelievably good value for money – especially at the pasta and pizza end of the menu – and the use of first class ingredients is noticeable, especially with the pasta and the salad ingredients. It’s clear the kitchen cares about sourcing good produce. The food is well-cooked.
Importantly this is a child-friendly, trans-generational, family-ready restaurant which is comfortable and relaaaaaxing. It is so far removed from the brittle pretensions of much of contemporary food and restaurant culture, as to be a breath of fresh air.
It can be an emancipating experience to dine in a restaurant where, because these things don’t matter, one gets back to the reasons for which one actually dines out – relaxing, slowing the brain, socialising in a real way.
The well-delivered family restaurant experience is demotic and altogether different from the high church experience, where the expectation of greatness keeps one vigilant for its absence. This is often hard work. One wants things to perform so well in a ‘serious’ restaurant that disappointment is often closer the surface than in a family restaurant where if it isn’t just so – “well, stuff happens”.
Of course, if the food is awful and the service second rate, these distinctions are somewhat academic. A bad restaurant is a bad restaurant.
This reviewer does not naturally gravitate toward family restaurants. Small children do not belong in restaurants, despite the modern parent’s increasing and fashionable desire to impose their offspring on others at restaurants. Family restaurants are, to use the vernacular, not my scene.
Which gives you something of an idea of the regard I hold for Savini Restaurant in Mount Lawley, when I say it is thoroughly enjoyable and highly recommended.
Savini is a large, family-style Italian restaurant with pictures on the menu to explain the different shapes of pasta. It serves icecream sundaes and spaghetti bolognaise.
It isn’t licensed – which immediately sorts out the customers from the restaurant goers. And it offers no-nonsense service which, while not charming, is crisply businesslike and punctilious.
It has a wood-fired oven from which a range of pizzas and wood fired meat dishes are offered.
The waiter delivered two menus to the table, which was confusing at first until it was explained one was for specials, the other was the regular menu, which was even more confusing as both menus looked permanent to my eye. We flipped from one to the other and chose several dishes from each menu.
The calamari grigliati ($12.50/$17.50) was superb. The entrée size was a huge serving of finely sliced, fried squid rings as tender as bare feet on a pebbly road. They were perfectly cooked. The thick seafood sauce which accompanied the rings was dense and oily and chunky with chopped capers.
The ravioli aragosta ($15.50/$19.50) was billed as a ravioli of crayfish and king prawn in a tomato, cognac and cream sauce. It was a huge serving, curiously piled into a small, breakfast-style bowl, which made it difficult to eat without sending tsunamis of cream sauce onto the tablecloth. It was piping hot. The pasta parcels were well cooked.
The sauce was creamy, robust and in your face, while managing not to taste of much, and the flavours of the filling was difficult to discern under the onslaught of the sauce. It was an honest rendition of a dish which could have done with a few less ingredients.
Savini allows the customer to mix and match pasta sauces with a range of pasta shapes, a terrific idea which makes one wonder why other restaurants of this ilk haven’t followed suit.
A main course of spinach and ricotta ravioli in napoletana sauce ($10.50) was a case in point. Again, the quality of the pasta and the filling shone through and, because the sauce was simple and unadorned, this dish really worked. The tomato-based sauce was exquisite – fresh and full of zing – with none of the tell tale tin can or muddy processed flavours one often associates with napoletana sauces in less reputable Italian cafés. It was an enormous serving.
A costoletta di vitello ($22.50) was classically Italian. Two small veal T-bones had been marinated in oil, lemon and rosemary and then banged in the wood-fire oven. It was served on a huge, colourful oval platter with a large garden salad (sliced orange garnish included) and accompanied by a side dish of excellently undercooked steamed vegetables including beans, potato and baby squash. The vegies were crisp and full of flavour. The salad leaves had more crunch than an abs class. The veal was too overdone for my liking, but it had retained much of its moisture and was sweet and juicy in the mouth.
An insalata mista ($6.50) was crammed with crisp lettuce, watercress, cucumber, sliced raw mushroom and quartered tomatoes. As with the earlier pasta dish, there was a huge amount of salad crammed into a tiny bowl. Consequently, any moves to serve the salad resulted in it erupting over the table.
The tiramisu was terrific, but the kitchen at Savini kicked an own goal with the presentation. Can anyone explain why a kitchen would take a well-made tiramisu and plate it up smothered in cheap, supermarket chocolate topping and a quarter slice of orange jammed into its creamy cap? It beggars belief.
The compulsion to go a few ingredients too far seems to be the Savini way.
That said, Savini is unbelievably good value for money – especially at the pasta and pizza end of the menu – and the use of first class ingredients is noticeable, especially with the pasta and the salad ingredients. It’s clear the kitchen cares about sourcing good produce. The food is well-cooked.
Importantly this is a child-friendly, trans-generational, family-ready restaurant which is comfortable and relaaaaaxing. It is so far removed from the brittle pretensions of much of contemporary food and restaurant culture, as to be a breath of fresh air.
