Is Don, Is Good

The food is Italian-ish, with swagger. DAVID MATTHEWS finds Don Peppino’s godfathers write their own rules.

- David Matthews

Speaking as someone who never went to the Grand Pacific Blue Room, all I have is questions. Were there always this many stairs when it was a club? Flights and flights of them, turning up and around past what should surely be a whole other level. Did the neon always pulse so hypnotically? Was the cappuccino of white beans with truffle oil on the restaurant menu any good, or was that just a ’90s thing?

Full Circle, the collective that, in its current form, comprises floor manager Tom Merry weather and chefs Daniel Johnston and Harry Levy, are running the place – and they sure know how to pick a venue.

For Don Peppino’s, they’ve scraped the patina of cigarette smoke and spilt Daiquiris off the walls of the old Oxford Street nightclub, scattered a few eucalyptus branches around, and called it done. The burners are firing again in the kitchen that supplied the Blue Room’s restaurant, but otherwise it’s bare bones and Tupac Shakur posters in the toilets.

Wilmer, their last outing, was a sunny alfresco situation in Potts Point, so this might seem something of a regression. Don Peppino’s is more in line with the condemned-studio chic the Circle rocked at The Eat In in Chippendale, perhaps, or the fading-Italian-dynasty vibe they gave off at run-down trattoria Alfio’s in Leichhardt than a true step forward.