Thursday 13 December 2007

King / Bourke Quest Part 10: Ortigia

Ortigia
443 Little Collins St, Melbourne (map)
9670 0774

OrtigiaOrtigia menu

My Quest to find decent lunch-hour food a quick walking distance from King St and Bourke St continues. One North-wind-hot lunchtime last week I met F, M and A at Ortigia, a cafe across the road from Vue de Monde. Ortigia's interior is rather fancy - airy cathedral ceilings, marble benchtops, Gothic framed menu chalkboard and a chandelier - but we managed to snaffle one of the outside tables in Bank Place instead. At Ortigia they tend to have one of two varieties of pizza al taglio and a few specials (eg lasagne, frittata, homemade pie) as well as a bunch of panini.

We had a good and a bad experience. On the plus side, the panino I had - crammed with capocollo, fennel, green olive tapenade, rocket and provolone - was one of the best panini I've had in recent months. On the minus side, at only 1:10pm Ortigia had no vegetarian food left (other than the fruit salad, which was suggested as a meal for her - !!!!!), so poor F couldn't order anything to eat! She insisted, however that the rest of us eat as she drank her coffee.

Panino with capocollo, fennel, green olive tapenade, rocket and provolone

Alas poor F - but personally, I love capocollo. My Nonno makes his own capocollo every year for Christmas, hanging his cured meat for months in a funny little flyscreen-wrapped cage in his garage. Mum and Dad's Christmas present each year is their very own capocollo - he used to make them a leg of prosciutto each year when I used to live at home, but although we'd feast on prosciutto all summer long, we'd never finish it in time! :)

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