The adage that if you’re on a good thing, then stick with it must resonate with Joe Mammone, the Melbourne-based restaurateur unveiling his latest bar project within striking distance of his other tentpole establishments in the city’s tony South Yarra quarter.
Tetto di Carolina sits on the floor above Bar Carolina, a moodily-lit space with a barrel-vaulted ceiling that local studio Chris Connell Design – stepping up once again in a relationship with Mammone that stretches back 30 years – has dressed with leather banquettes, rust-red steel wall, terrazzo floors sprinkled with yellow onyx tiles. The centerpiece is a six-metre-long walnut bar framed by handmade porcelain tiles. Here, bar manager Alex Dyzart (ex-London’s Bar Three) oversees a wine and cocktail menu of varying degrees of lethalness, ranging from a Highline Highball of gin and chamomile cordial to a Carnegie Club of 12-year-old Buttered Dewars and banana caramel.
An outdoor terrace, the bar’s titular roof, offers a low-line view of South Yarra’s fancy Toorak Road, the vista perfectly matched by both the alcohol and Italian small plates – our recent favourites including duck liver parfait encased within flaky cannoli logs, and a slider-sized brioche bun stuffed with fried chicken and fennel slaw.§
