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At the surface level, Osteria il Coccia looks like many other coastal diners where lunch tends to start with rosé and oysters. Rattan chairs, white linen cushions and dried flowers. Tones of apricot, polished wood and very nice tiling. With a view of Ettalong Beach through trees across the road, you might expect a menu spruiking safe things like prawn rolls and panko-crumbed whiting.

But the food here isn’t phoned in. Nicola Coccia’s cooking is equal parts commanding and comforting and there isn’t another restaurant on the Central Coast quite like it. Heck, there aren’t many Sydney restaurants like it.

Firedoor in Surry Hills – where Lennox Hastie cooks with flames and embers rather than gas and electricity – is the only blood relation. Coccia exclusively uses fire and coals, too, but unlike Firedoor, where it can take months to get a table and the five-course tasting menu costs $195, Coccia happily accepts walk-in guests and a saltbush-garnished pork cutlet is big enough to split between
two for $49. It’s been open since 2019, and I feel a sting of shame it’s taken me so long to visit.

That pork cutlet is a tremendous bit of pig. Its blistered skin has gnarly, audible crackle and there’ll be an arm wrestle to claim the bone.

Before they opened in Ettalong, Coccia and his wife, Alexandra, ran a hatted bistro in Bowral. The Naples-born chef also spent time at Ormeggio at The Spit in Mosman and you can see some of that modern Italian influence in dishes such as the piadina romagnola ($21) – three pillowy discs of flatbread served with a lush squiggle of taramasalata and neon-orange pops of salmon roe.

It’s the right way to kick off lunch, maybe with a bottle of Bernard Metrat 2021 “Terre d’Alizarine” Gamay ($80), which has enough spice and weight to carry you through to the meatier stuff.

And meaty stuff it is. (If you can rally a large group to eat here, do so.) That 350-gram pork cutlet is a tremendous bit of pig, dry-aged and grilled over ironbark and sticky with a wine and bone-based reduction, plus bright romesco sauce. Its blistered skin has gnarly, audible crackle and there’ll be an arm wrestle to claim the bone.

Juicy, deep-crimson duck breast ($50) is also dry-aged before a respectful turn over the embers and sits pretty next to black-garlic puree and marigold flowers.

Rangers Valley sirloin ($58) tastes of a cow that’s spent a good life munching on grain, and nudges a wodge of potato gratin and salsa verde.

Alexandra leads a floor team that’s properly invested in guests having a beaut time: jokes are shared; wine is recommended; martinis ($22) are stiff and cold.

There were four of us eating when I visited in June, so the cappelletti ($38) was split across four bowls. The chubby, ricotta-filled parcels are flavour-boosted with smoked mozzarella, while bolognese-style ragu sits on top, rich with veal and beef and pork sausage, plus the magic that happens after many hours of intimate behaviour between milk and wine. I would very much like to eat it on toast.

Tuna pops up a few times in the form of a fillet of wood-roasted bluefin to share ($55) and raw swatches ($29) with a broth reinforced by smoked fish bones, bonito flakes, honey and lemon (although a little more acid wouldn’t be the worst thing).

A riff on Piedmont’s vitello tonnato ($29) stars thin slices of buttery, marbled wagyu instead of veal, and a balanced, tuna-infused cream sauce that’s punchy without being a fishy slap in the face.

Anyone with a serious sweet tooth will find a lot to like about a tarte tatin ($24) with smoked cream poured tableside over deeply caramelised apples.

I’m more into the $25 Basque cheesecake (and its relatively restrained use of sugar), light and airy and covered in a tangy, purple coulis of grapes and Amaro Montenegro. The tidy list of digestive booze may come in handy at this juncture. I can’t imagine anyone has ever left a lunch here still hungry.

The Coccias recently announced that they’ll be opening Carne & Cucina, a new restaurant and butcher shop in Erina Heights. A joint project with the team from Saratoga Quality Meats, there’ll be more hunks of dry-aged, particularly beefy steaks, pastas and take-home meals (Nico is a bloke who knows his way around a lasagne).

It’s set to open in the next couple of weeks, but the exact date is still a moving target. What I can confirm is that it won’t take me five years to visit it.

This review was originally published in Good Weekend magazine