Rocco Esposito & Salvatore Giorgio

Conversation with a chef: Hi Salvatore, nice to see you. How long has Bar Rosella been here?

Salvatore Giorgio: Two years.

How long have you been here?

SG: I started at the start of the month. I'm doing Southern food here, from Puglia because the owner, Rocco is from Puglia.

Tell me about Puglian food?

SG: Do you know where Puglia is roughly? You've got the heel of Italy, it's east of Naples. Puglia is famous for the orecchiette, the little 'ear' pasta. They are famous for a lot of things: the burrata cheese, obviously. That's where it's originates from. Foccacia Barese, there's a lot of Primitivo, the wine.

SG: This is Rocco, the owner. He's an expert on wines. He studied to be a Master of wines.

Rocco Esposito: Quick task.

You've been here two years?

RE: Yes, we opened in March, 2022. How it came about, I used to be in another premises in Cambridge Street. Where Smith & Daughter is now. I was in there. It used to be called Project 49. It later was branded Bar Rosella, but it was branded on the 16th of March, 2020 and on the 19th of March, 2020 we went into lockdown. So it didn't have the lifespan that it should have had. Then on the way back from all these clumsy lockdowns, the landlord put a bit of a hard blow torch on our face saying, okay, now we want all the money back twice the interest basically acting like APRA, the government body for any banks in Australia. We said, look, that wasn't the deal with the Federal Government. But we had to pull the pin. Then I was walking up here, I saw this place came up for lease, and I used to live just in Little Smith Street, and I remember how good this was just to come in and have a glass of wine. The only disappointing part of this place was that there was never a kitchen. You had your cold cuts and your quiche or your mushroom tart, but if you wanted to have a pasta or anything like that, there was no way. Unless there was an event upstairs where they used to have a domestic kitchen. But I jumped on board. There were a few people that wanted to have this place. I just pushed it through and there you go. We transformed it a bit. I'm not sure if you've ever been here since Gertrude Street Enoteca. So it's kind of different now. There was upstairs dining, but you were only allowed to go there if you were invited and you had to go to another door. We also added the kitchen here, the kitchen upstairs and a courtyard.

It's beautiful. I do like the courtyard with the barrels and so on. And the tea towels drying.

RE: That's such a southern Italian feel. The idea about Rosella was to create a restaurant that was going to showcase where I come from, which is Puglia. I know it's the hot destination now, but it's not just because of its prettiness, but also because of the food. And I thought, I'm silly if I don't actually wave my flag and say I am from there and beat my own chest in there. Not trying to be vain, but to do that, initially I wrote the menus myself purely because I was the only one from there. But it came to a point that things weren't going that well with the kitchens. We'd added the manager, we were talking about we do need someone that understands Southern Italian food. And then he said to me, oh, I've got one for you. And now Salvatore has been here for four weeks. It's going pretty good. I can say the food has lifted the whole lot. The whole game has just been lifted now.

It's quite different to Marnong Estate. Are you the only chef in the kitchen here?

SG: No, my sous chef from MarnongEstate is here with me.

So how many does it seat it here?

RE: We have capacity of 44 in this room, about 26 outside and 24 upstairs in the dining room.

But it feels small and cozy.

SG: It does.

RE: I like to call it the best kind of squishiness. I perform better as an operator. I perform better in spaces like this than huge places. When I was at Vue de Monde, it was great, but bloody hell it was just way too majestic.

So you were front of house.

RE: I joined Vue de Monde in 2011 as Director of Wine. I was basically the wine director for the whole group until 2016.

And then you wanted to go out on your own?

RE: I'll give you a bit of a background story. When I first came to Australia, I worked at a place in Fitzroy Street, Bortolotto's that lasted about three months because then the family who owned it were given the space for free at Crown, which was called Cecconi's Restaurant. And then from there they moved to Flinders Lane. But I left Cecconi's in April, 2004 and moved to Beechworth, three hours away from here. And then in October that year, I opened a restaurant called Warden's Rest. And I had it until the end of 2010. Then I had one year where I worked at a winery doing marketing and sales and stuff like that and wine training for staff. And then after that I've worked at Vue de Monde. Then of course, once you have your own business, it doesn't matter how cushy you are in someone else's business, you still get itchy feet. I opened a deli in Beechwood called Project 49, which my now ex-wife runs.

Why project 49?

RE: Because, see the land there in that the photo, that's my land in Beechworth, which is located on 49Ressom Lane. And we had a project we wanted to put where the shed is. We wanted to demolish the shed and put a huge sort of barn and grow our own veggies and all that stuff. Everything that came from land would've been jarred or bottled or cryovacced to then be sold through our store in Beechworth. That was the project. The other project was the first project that came out fruition from that land was a chardonnay that I make, which I still make called Project 49. But after all this time, I wanted to change the name to Rosella. And why I changed it to Rosella is because on the wine label there's a little bird. 49 represents the number of the land. The illustration represents the flora and the fauna that I see each vintage on our land. That changes every year. The only thing that doesn't change is the rosella bird. There's a double meaning on that apart from the fact that we see these birds on the land. But the project was going to be myself, my ex-wife and her brother, who was a hostage negotiator for the Federal Police. But he got a very bad form of cancer. We made him part of the project and he was only given six months to leave. We said, well just come and spend time with us. We can make wine, you can sell it through your own channels with your friends. Every time he was on our land and having a break between tending the vines or picking grapes, he used to sit down and all these beautiful rosella birds were landing on his arm. Just before releasing the wine, the very first label, he passed away, two weeks prior. So we decided to add a Rosella bird on the side of the label. So then later when I decided to rebrand, I didn't know what to use. This was three years ago. I pulled up the blind and the ray of sunshine just landed on that bird on the label. And I said, I think that's Norman. I think the name of the restaurant should be Rosella. I called the Rosella factory, the tomato sauce factory and I said, I've got this idea, but I've got this issue. Can you help me work it through it? They suggested what to do, call it Bar Rosella, which I then later registered. And that's how I got away with it. That's why we call this place Rosella. It all stemmed from the bird on the first part of the project that I had, which is the wine.

It's so beautiful.

RE: Take it with you. It's a 2017 wine. Take it, take it. Don't use it in cooking. Chill it down.

Beautiful. Thank you. It's lovely to hear the stories behind these projects.

RE: Then it makes more sense when you drink it.

What brought you to Australia?

RE: It was a relationship that didn't work many, many years ago. I told my mum I was going to go there for six months, learn how to surf and come back 27 years later.

Can you surf?

RE: I still can't surf. I've got two kids.

What is it that you love about hospitality?

RE: Oh, look, it's a big question and you can have numerous answers. I think it draws me back to when I was a kid. I went to hospitality school, but I think I learned hospitality from mum and dad and mum and dad don't work in hospitality, but they are very hospitable people. Mum and my aunties and grandma as well, they'd all spend time in the kitchen doing all this stuff. Then at all the Christmas lunches, I was the only kid wearing a little cloth over my arm like a waiterserving the tables. I thought, oh yeah, maybe that's the path that I have to take. And here I am now. I am still doing it, but not because I just like carrying plates. I like the fact ofcombining flavours from food and wine; I am always drawn back to this.

I think it's really interesting you talked about your family being really hospitable. I said that to someone recently. We were talking about hospitality and about what it takes to create a great ambiance and to welcome people in. I was saying, well at the end of the day it is about being hospitable. He was surprised at that. What do you love about hospitality, Salvatore?

SG: I've always said, when the customer's happy, that's the main thing for me.

RE: It's a satisfaction. You learn along the way that, particularly in my case, not so much in the kitchen scenario, I guess, but it could be the same. It's not about how much you know about food and it's not how much you know about wine that makes or break who you are in terms of the professional side of thing. But it's how I deal with different people. And now I can manage to suggest something that will create a memorable experience. It doesn't matter how fine dining or casual it might be. To me, it's a win. If a guest walks out and they keep coming back, we must have ticked the box. That to me is a great satisfaction. We can always make mistakes. The pasta could be too cooked, we maybe suggest the wrong wines. But we very quickly recognise this.

And that's another thing, wine. Wine has opened up a lot to me, in terms of career. I just have so much joy and pride. People don't even look at the wine list now, they just leave it to us. So creating that trust, it's another way for me to say, okay, this is the reason why I love my job.

Well it's, it's the same as I love just saying to chefs, give me what you want me to eat. They know best and you know best about wine.

What's the ideal dining experience here?

SG: There are several courses. Weve got Stuzzichini, which is finger food, like oysters, focaccia, we've got different types of olives from Puglia and then we threw in some lupini beans, which is a staple of Puglia. And then we've got wagyu bresaola. And then on the entrees we've got fave et cicoria, which is a must in every Puglia house, probably on a daily basis. It's a broad bean puree with chicory, which is sauteed with garlic and chili. So it's almost like a hummus. That's an everyday thing.

So you've made the menu? You didn't inherit it?

SG: No, I made this menu.

Oh there is a Feed me menu for people like me who dont want to make any decisions. So it's a small kitchen. Are you making the pasta?

SG: Yes. We've got another kitchen upstairs as well. All the mains will come from upstairs. Some entrees. And then the pastas will come from here. Certain entrees will come here because before they were just doing it in one kitchen, and it was cramped. We've got both.

What a great part of town to be in as well. Gertrude Street. It's just so happening, isn't it? And so many different regions of Italy to explore.

SG: Puglia hasn't really been discovered much in Australia.

RE: It's not strictly Puglian, but it's generally a southern Italian feel, which I like. If you look at the southern Italian cuisine, we take shape and forms from all of the other systems, which happened many, many hundreds of years ago. There's Turkish flavours, Lebanese flavours, Spanish flavours. Southern Italian cuisine is that so called bordello between all of the nationalities that they've gone through that that neck of the wood, unlike the Northern Italian cuisine, which is slightly more refined. Traditionally there is a French influence, an Austrian vibe, a German vibe. Even though the Northern Italians, the Southern Italians, we never like each other. It happens even on the food front. We don't think that we cook better than them, even though I could without a doubt. My mum said to me once, if you were to put a national dish, which they do everywhere in Italy now, call thatSpaghetti Aglio Olio e Peperoncino.You got exactly the same recipe. One from the south cooks and one from the north cooks there. Inevitably the one from the south is the one you will like because we have an excellent ingredient that's called love. Because in the north it's all textbook.

SG: And a lot of the top chefs with a Michelin star who are in the north of Italy originally, they were all from the south. That's the truth.

Is it sunnier in the south of Italy?

SG: We are more warmer. They're more colder.

So they take that with them and they go and be top chefs in the north as well?

RE: A funny little side story, which kind of relates to what we were just talking about. I got into wine and I started to focus on that so much that every time I go back overseas now and you know, there's mum and dad and aunties and there's a bottle of wine on the table that generally we don't drink posh wines there. The wines that they make next door is the wine that goes on the table. Which is kind of the mystical word of terroir. It's where it comes from. It tastes good on the table because it's just made there. But every time there's a good bottle of wine on the table and I start to talk about the vintage and all of that Mum says, you talk about wine, just like we talk about tomato sauce because they make tomato sauce the whole year and then sometimes they keep a bottle from three years ago, a bottle from three years ago and then they remember what was happening back then and all this stuff and that's how I talk about wine.

Absolutely. And the memories and that people come together to make that as well.

RE: That's another thing in the south of Italy, we tend to relate ourself when it comes to produce and product. We relate ourselves thanks to neuro-gastronomy. What does this dish remind me of? It reminds my grandmother. That reminds me of my cousin, what is this one? Oh god, remember that time when we went in the cellar. Our reference is always neuro gastronomy. And that's why on the way out you must see right up above the door, the place is called Rosella Dining Room and Bar. That's the business legal name. It's known out there as Bar Rosella. But our motto is serving food, wine and stories. That to me is that point ofdifference. A lot of people say oh what aboutall'Assassina.Everyone knows aboutall'Assassinabecause Stanley Tucci just released this Puglian video and all he does is talk aboutall'Assassina and before that Google will tell you pretty much what it is. But it's not until you come in and say what's spaghettiall'Assassinaand get half a minute story, you say hang on a minute, I'll have that. And again, it builds trust because obviously you need to be backed, but the produce and the product needs to be good. So it's no point telling a story if it's not backed from real stuff. And that's what basically sets us apart.

I love that. I'm all about the story.

Well maybe the next business I'll open is Food, Wine and Bullshit.

Bar Rosella, 229 Gertrude Street, Fitzroy