One of Perth’s finest restaurants opens a new, all-day cantina diners will love

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Poor Subiaco. As Perth gears up for an especially sporty seven days, all postcode 6008 can do is reminisce about its pre-Optus Stadium glory days, when Subi Oval hosted AFL and WAFL fixtures, rugby matches, soccer grand finals, and heavy-hitters from the music world.

On the upside, the suburb has avoided the slow death that some predicted. One reason for averting such disaster: the loss of a major sporting oval equals more opportunities for Subi’s many food and drink operators to shine. Or at the very least, it means they don’t have to contend with the crush of footy crowds racing against the countdown to bouncedown.

One of the venues that’s done plenty of heavy lifting for Subi – and Perth at large – is Lulu La Delizi, Ivana and Joel Valvasori-Pereza’s lively two-hatted osteria, an address widely regarded as one of the country’s finest to eat pasta.

After almost a decade of introducing diners to the joys of corzetti pasta, Montasio cheese, grappa and other hallmarks of Northern Italy’s Slavic-influenced food culture, the Valvasori-Perezas felt the time was right for an expansion.

Enter the Lulu La Delizia cantina, a svelte 24-seat bolthole that opened in June next door to the restaurant.

While cantina is an apt catch-all to describe the expansion, I’d describe it as more of a bar, albeit a bar in the Italian sense of the word. Think of it as a fluid, all-day space with a food and drink offering that kicks off with coffee in the morning and ends with harder stuff at night. But this is the Italian bar as seen through the eyes of the Valvasori-Perezas – a gaze that’s well-versed in interpreting Italian food traditions for a West Australian audience.

The cantina isn’t open for breakfast – gee that handsome marble counter would make the perfect backdrop for caffe al bar, the Italian ritual of the speedy espresso and snack – but it does serve a traditional, albeit limited, espresso-based coffee menu using Vittoria beans and zero alt milks.

There’s still a Northern Italian bend to the dozen wines poured by the glass, but the drinks list also features cheery warm-climate vino, highballs and other cuvees and cocktails that wouldn’t fit with the mothership’s regionally specific focus. Departing from the norm has also given management a green light to do different things on the food front, starting with the introduction of lunchtime paninis.

It’s no secret that Lulu gives good bread (that legendary house-baked country loaf with butter and sugo). This time, though, management have handed over baking responsibilities to Osborne Park bakers Il Granino. In return, they’ve rewarded team Lulu with a splendid ciabatta roll that is airy of crust, golden of crumb and a few megapascals short of the jaw-busting Italian bread rolls of yesteryear that were less lunchbox fodder and more chew-toy for SAS bulldogs.

While the panini menu features five rotating options, Lulu’s twin cooking tenants – minimum embellishment, maximum flavour – are both present and accounted for.

The veal cotoletta roll is the after-school schnitzel sandwich of our dreams. A triple-decker of roasted rooster slathered in a lemony mayo, lettuce plus a base layer of provolone is the Red Rooster chicken roll’s Sliding Doors moment. Panini specials are also part of the discussion and might see Joel’s legendary pork meatballs transported into a wheat-based holding cell for a limited time only.

Otherwise, those meatballs are a permanent item on a tight a la carte menu of Aus-talian dishes that, depending on your familiarity with Lulu, you might have encountered in other guises over the past nine years. The braised cannellini beans with silverbeet, however, was a new one to me. And I’ve enjoyed Lulu’s pork terrine as a sort-of spring roll previously, but the dense, brawn-like pleasure works just fine on its own alongside a straight-shooting green salad.

The pastas of the day are plucked from the restaurant’s impressive oeuvre of Northern Italian-influenced sauces, including crisped lardons of San Daniele prosciutto, sage and poppy seed – a luxurious combination I’ve eaten and enjoyed more when teamed with lasagnette rather than dense potato gnocchi.

Like the panini, the single-serve aperitivo platters are built to order with care, from the toasting of nuts to the topping of crisp crostoli with rich, gamey liver parfait and dense salt cod mayo.

Despite all the new, management has retained much of what makes Lulu great. The assured service. The boozy tiramisu. The result of this old-and-new thinking is a mixed-use, gently brutalist space that, on a sunny spring afternoon, draws both laptop warriors in suits and short-wearing flaneurs clutching tall, glowing glasses of amber-hued Aperol spritz. The previous Saturday, the room was bolstered by the energy of a girl gang of eight catching up over a set-menu dinner.

Lulu’s cantina already feels like it’s found a groove. Having had the winter to refine and rehearse, it looks set for something of a hot bar summer, filled with cool panini specials, good drinks and, fingers crossed, al fresco seating. Not because that’s how they do it in Italy, but because eating and drinking in the sun makes sense for WA.

Good Food reviews are booked anonymously and paid independently. A restaurant can’t pay for a review or inclusion in the Good Food Guide.