My visit to Mark and Vinny's began, as so many restaurant experiences do these days, with someone taking my details after I'd fumbled through scanning its QR code. What only became apparent after this maître 'd, soft-spoken, friendly, and dressed casually in a loose cardigan, checked in with me and my companion about the menu, was that he was none other than the eponymous Vinny himself (more formally, Vince Pizzinga).
That tells you everything you need to know about Mark and Vinny's in nutshell. There are a lot of great restaurants in Surry Hills - hell, there are a lot of great *Italian* restaurants in this neck of the woods - but while M&V's is, to my knowledge, the only one that serves such concoctions as a completely vegan take on carbonara (complete with plant-based egg yolk), it isn't a single, shallow gimmick that defines the place. Instead, it's the sense that every aspect of your experience has been hand-crafted - a genuinely artisanal establishment, in a day and age where the word gets thrown around carelessly. The space is, accordingly, quite small, *very* cosy, and unpretentious, like you're about to be taken on an intimate journey. Everything feels deliberately designed. A pink neon sign high on the wall, above the passage into the kitchen, reads, "Fly me to the moon." It can't help but feel like a mission statement.
The revelation of Vinny's identity came about because I'd mentioned that the Maccaruni Calabrese being an old family recipe had caught my attention (I'm a sucker for things with that kind of sentiment and history). Vinny responded that it had indeed been passed down from his mother (or was it grandmother?), but in a shocking twist, he recommended against it, suggesting instead the seafood linguini, in which the pasta had been enhanced with blue spirulina (an edible algae) that lent it its distinctive colour. And if an Italian man speaking in any sort of negative about a recipe of his mamma's (or nonna's) doesn't demonstrate the absolute height of authenticity, I don't know what does (for the record, it's because the maccaruni dish, while delicious and steeped in tradition, was a beef rib ragu, and that can be had in many places, whereas the spiraluni linguini was a house signature). I wasn't disappointed, and neither was my friend, who opted for the faux-carbonara Charcoal Bucatini.
We ended up staying until closing time, and as the staff cleared out the last tables, a tune started playing. As befitting a place owned and run by children of Italian immigrants, it was by none other than Francis Albert himself. Our server confirmed that Frankie's smooth crooning sends them off every night. Deliberately designed.
"Fly me to the moon, and let me play among the stars..." read more
