When your business is named for a fine kind of flour and you’re all about pasta, what’s the logical brand extension? If you’re Andreas Papadakis, Luke Skidmore and Alberto Fava, the move back in 2017 was to expand next door with Osteria Ilaria and do (almost) no pasta. But now they’re really rolling up their sleeves and getting floury: in early April they’ll open Figlia, a new pizzeria at the top of Lygon Street, taking all they know about good flour and fine dough, fermenting it naturally, topping it in a mostly traditional manner and firing it with a wood/gas hybrid oven. It’s going to be quite something. And as if that wasn’t joyous enough news on its own, they’re also opening a deli on the same site selling sandwiches, organic produce, filter coffee, house-cured meats and wine – all the Brunswick East essentials, basically, barring perhaps a bike shop and a barber.
Pronounced “FILL-EE-AH” and not “FIG-LEE-AH”, the pizzeria’s name means “daughter” in Italian. Grana, the deli, is easier to pronounce, the name a reference to its focus on cheese – the Tipo team is collaborating with cheesemaker Lucy Whitlow to produce the cheeses that will appear on the pizze and in the sandwiches, and in the cabinet at the deli.
Pasta will not be a feature of the pizzeria menu (though that’s also what the guys said about Osteria Ilaria when it was first conceived, so you could take that piece of information with a grain of salt). “It’s a pizzeria first and foremost, says Luke Skidmore, “but with lots of snacks, lots of secondi and a lot of vegetables. It’ll be the sort of place where you can come in for a glass of wine and hang out.” The drinks offer will be along similar lines to Tipo 00, but with a natural lean and a more global reach.
This being a venue opening on one of the city’s go-to streets for parmas might prompt the question, but no, there’s no plans for a parma alla Tipo. “No parmas. This isn’t that end of the street,” says Skidmore. What about a cotoletta? “Maybe.”
Tipo 00 has long been one of the city’s most in-demand spaces. Will this new arrival take the pressure off the seating chart? What will the situation be like at Figlia? “Hopefully it’ll be easier to get in,” Skidmore says, adding that the mixture of bar seating, bookings for groups and walk-ins should make it an approachable proposition. The fit out by Ewert Leaf, meanwhile, he describes as industrial modern Italian. “This part of the city is a bit like our equivalent of where Roberta’s is in Brooklyn, so a bit like that, but with more of a Melbourne-Italian twist.”
Speaking of the neighbourhood, what’s it like opening a place doing Italian food on Australia’s most Italian street? “Feels good,” says Skidmore. “Makes sense.”
Figlia and Grana open in early April at 331 Lygon St, Brunswick East, tipo00.com.au