Alexandria's own Café Sopra and Fratelli Fresh

Despair not, carb-hungry fans of the now-closed Café Sopra in Danks Street, Waterloo. Neighbouring suburb, Alexandria now has its own Café Sopra, complete with Fratelli Fresh providore, setting up home in what was previously a pub.

Café Sopra and Fratelli Fresh, Mitchell Road, Alexandria

Gone are the pokies and in place, the Fratelli Fresh cool room housing vacuum-sealed packs of salumi and wedges of cheese.

Shelves of pasta in Fratelli Fresh, Mitchell Road, Alexandria

Study the wall of dried pasta or shelves of balsamic vinegar and olive oil as you wait for a table, inevitably at dinnertime on a Thursday night, although it doesn't take too long for our two high seats at the bar.

You can even wander around the produce section with a drink in hand as you wait, although the Fratelli Fresh section closes for purchases at 7pm.

Affettati misti at Café Sopra, Mitchell Road, Alexandria

The old pub feel is barely noticeable, except for the remaining U-shaped bar with beer taps, looking through to the well-staffed kitchen. Italian accents are aplenty with T-shirted waitstaff running the room with efficiency and intention. There's no signature Café Sopra blackboard menu here, but printed paper menus.

We started with affettati misti; a mixed plate of cured meats and cheese. I didn't quite catch it all but I think there was prosciutto, ham, bresaola, coppa, chilli salami and smoked mozzarella cheese.

Affettati misti

There were a few particularly salty items – the ham, for one – with the highlights being the chilli salami with quite the kick, smooth and subtle bresaola, and smoky flavoured, semi-soft mozzarella – all shaved paper thin.

Aperol Spritz

Aside from a few cocktails and classic aperitifs like an Aperol Spritz, the beauty of Café Sopras all over the city is their fantastic, Italian-leaning wine list where the house red and white wines start at $3.50 per glass.

That said, I can rarely go past the Montepulciano or for more celebratory occasions, the full range of Pommery by the glass or bottle.

The pizza chef in action

The Alexandria outpost of Café Sopra is like the Bridge Street, CBD one in that there's a pizza menu to supplement the pasta offerings – with fresh dough stretched and thrown ever so professionally before going into the woodfired pizza oven.

Pickled beetroot salad with soft boiled egg, crisp pancetta, rosemary
and gorgonzola dressing

The salads at Café Sopra are as legendary as their pasta dishes and we forego the classic shaved Brussels sprouts salad for the pickled beetroot one, with large chunks of the sweetly earthy root vegetable beneath large mixed leaves awash with a creamy gorgonzola dressing.

Two halved and soft boiled eggs bulked up the salad, while thins of crisp pancetta added highlight flavours and inimitable texture.

Tagliatelle with salsicce, crushed peas, mascarpone and pecorino 

The medium width ribbons of tagliatelle are one of my favourite long pasta types, here done with nubs of quality Italian sausage and a slightly green-tinted sauce of crushed peas and creamy mascarpone.

Topped with grated pecorino cheese, the tagliatelle was slightly underseasoned; however, that was easy enough to rectify and forgive with salt and pepper brought to the table without asking.

Lamb ragu with chilli, rosemary and gnocchetti

I have trouble going past any ragu or the very good, rich bolognese at Café Sopra, and with the last of winter in our midst I had the lamb ragu with gnocchetti - supposedly like little gnocchi but a bit like shell pasta too.

The pasta seemed to play second fiddle in the dish that was so generous with slow-cooked chunks of falling apart lamb, it was pretty much a lamb dish with a sensationally full-flavoured tomato sauce (and no noticeable chilli).

Inside the dining roomCafé  Sopra

I don't remember the pasta dishes being quite so big at Café Sopra and with a maximum price of $22, they might have the locals' weeknight dinner out covered.

There was a moment's consideration of doggy-bagging some of the pasta (they do offer takeaway), but the plates ended up completely clean and us a little stuffed.

Torta Banoffee

But not so much as to skip dessert. I've known about Café Sopra's banoffee pie for some time now and had never tried it until now – and I've been missing out.

The tart features a thick biscuit base that's a flawless balance of crumble and sweetness with a touch of salt. Then it's a thick caramel that is just heaven in a mouthful, beneath perfectly piped whipped cream and thin slices of fresh banana, all topped with chocolate shavings. A more perfect tart, there could not be.

Shelves of sauce

It's got your groceries covered; it's got drinks and snacks covered; it's got dinner covered; it's got that banoffee tart. Alexandria's own Café Sopra is as good a local as you could have – welcome to the neighbourhood.

Café Sopra: Up under Bridge Street

I can definitely stop whinging about pasta in the city, for not long after two options for decent, non-microwaved, non-bain marie pasta came the third – Café Sopra on Bridge Street, underground opposite the Australian Securities Exchange building.

There are lunchtime queues, but not nearly as bad as those at Jamie’s Italian, but there’s also a large bar area in which to wait, or indeed, just dine on the pizzeria and mozzarella bar menu if waiting it out for pasta is not an option.

Pommery champagne at Café Sopra, Bridge Street, Sydney

It appears the Santa Vittoria brand is promoted alongside the bar, where a seat is hard to come by on a Friday lunch. The packed bar area (not the main dining room, which is next to the open kitchen) seems scarce of staff that are able to take orders, but at least the seats come and go fairly briskly.

But when we finally do get to order, it’s hard to ignore the ‘Recession Mark II’ prices of the wine list where house red and white wines by the glass are $3.50 (Pommery by the glass, $10, is a special on the day).

Every other wine, predominantly Italian, comes in at under $13 from memory and both the Montepulciano reds I try are distractingly smooth and velvety.

Bresaola, grilled peaches, arugula and bocconcini

Actually seated at the mozzarella bar, I could’t watch the multiple plates of mozzarella and other cheeses leave the bar and not have some for myself. Having previously tried and loved the mozzarella with eggplant, I went instead with the bresaola-featured salad of grilled peaches, rocket and sliced bocconcini.

I’m still yet to find an Australian mozzarella that has some flavour in addition to the great texture of the stretched cheese, and this bocconcini was no winner. A small plate presented the thin slices of salty bresaola, of which I’m currently playing favourites with its porcine cousin, prosciutto.

Sweet and mushily grilled peach segments are the perfect offsetting taste to the salty cured meat, although the salt flake flecked rocket didn’t really help the cause.

Nduja salami, capsicum and ricotta pizza

Having glimpsed at the pizza-makers at the front of the restaurant while waiting for service, it appeared that the bases they used for pizza were sadly pre-prepared and pre-cooked. Thick enough to prevent bubbling of the crust, the base was the only let-down of the fantastic salami topping, even if it wasn’t the spicy salami paste I was expecting.

But spicy the salami was, and deliciously so with the airy, piped fat worms of white ricotta cheese and colourful strips of cooked capsicum. In this case, the topping flavours were all there, leaving just the base languishing for a little more love.

The Café Sopra bar and mozzarella bar both open straight through from lunch to dinner while the proper dining section closes between 3pm to 6pm. And next time I have a long lunch, I’ll be investing it into waiting for a pasta lunch instead of that extra glass of Montepulciano.

The only way is up... to Café Sopra

Stroll into Fratelli Fresh on Danks Street in Waterloo (or indeed, drive in if there are available parking spaces), past the pretty displays of fruit and vegetables, up the very industrial staircase and into the upper level where shelves of pasta compete on variety with bottles of balsamic vinegar and other very Italian ingredients.

If you’re not distracted by the balsamic vinegar tasting station, move towards to the light and noise that should undoubtedly be Café Sopra – haven for lovers of pasta, fresh salads and Saturday lunches it seemed.

Smoked trout fish cake with soft poached egg, caper mayonnaise
from Café Sopra, Danks Street, Waterloo

With a few breakfast options amid the many salad and pasta options, a breakfaster would likely struggle not to order a plate of tagliatelle or a cabbage salad to break the fast.

For our lunch-y brunch, we quibble over who has the trout fish cake – I concede quickly so I get to order my second choice too. The fish cake arrives as a thick golden coin, sprinkled with sea salt and sitting amid watercress and a liberal puddle of yellow caper mayonnaise and higged by two halves of an egg.

The potato and trout filled cake was a little more fishy than I like, suitably offset by the tangy mayonnaise and the bitter-sour flavours of the radicchio side which is dressed in aged balsamic vinegar.

Radicchio with aged balsamic

As for me, I can’t go past the eggplant in the casareccia pasta dish, which actually turns out to be a minor player in the whole thing.

Casareccia with roast eggplant, goat’s cheese, portobello mushrooms, black olives

Long, ‘S’-rolled pasta fills the plate with the perhaps a dash of cream; blobs of white goat’s cheese; a few caramelised, charred bits of eggplant and many hunks of juicy Portobello mushrooms.

Casareccia - perhaps my new favourite pasta

Some cracked black pepper would have been perfect, and while the olives weren’t discernable to the eye or palate, its exclusion wasn’t missed as the pasta dish was pretty close to perfect as it was.

And just the right size too, but unfortunately not leaving any space for dessert and Café Sopra's famous banoffee pie.

We choose not to loiter as the queue to be seated extends into the grocery area. Completely satisfied with the meal, we do the only thing we can after things go up – we head back down to Fratelli Fresh and look forward to heading up again soon.