Eat it and weep: The pasta dish so good it brought our critic to tears

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Has a bowl of pasta ever made you want to weep? Not because of its toppings or sauce, but because of the pasta itself, its ethereal delicacy, its silvery slip across your tongue, its utter perfection?

A couple of weeks ago, while perched at the counter facing the window at Tipo 00, I felt myself quite overwhelmed by the pasta I was sharing with my son. Stuffed with goat’s cheese and adorned with a simple smattering of asparagus and wild garlic, the tortelli ($40) sang of springtime and the lovely fragility of seasons, food, life. Perhaps I’m reading too much into my pasta. Perhaps I don’t care.

I’ve had quite a few such moments at Tipo over the years, usually in the mid-afternoon when I’ve no business enjoying a leisurely lunch of pasta and a good bottle of wine, making it that much more pleasurable (and also much easier to accomplish; evening bookings are maddeningly difficult to come by, though you can almost always walk in if you’re willing to wait an hour or so).

There was the meal I had there with my brother before I moved back to Australia from the US, which helped to convince me that I had not, in fact, overblown the magic of my hometown, that it was alive and well and could be found in the laughter and casual welcome and incredible quality of Melbourne’s modest shopfront restaurants.

There have been spontaneous date nights with my husband, when we find ourselves in the city and decide to fall into the warmth of Tipo’s particular brand of hospitality, where the waiter is likely to call us “darlings” and recommend a mind-blowing Sicilian chardonnay, then revel in our absolute enjoyment of it.

The other night I popped my head in the door to see if there was a chance of nabbing a seat and had numerous friends jump up from their tables and come over to say hello – a restaurant and city as community. “Gosh,” I thought, “this is what home feels like.”

For those in the know, it’s been a decade of these types of scenes, of Andreas Papadakis’ masterful pasta and a room full of good cheer. When Tipo opened in November 2014, it was immediately embraced by critics, chefs and the public.

Part of its appeal, then as now, is that it does something identifiably Melburnian – the modern-ish (but not too modern) neighbourhood Italian joint – and does it so much better than almost anywhere else.

How many seafood crudos have I happily eaten over the past month, year, decade? And yet, how many of them have been as good as the current offering on Tipo’s menu, a thickly cut, velvety sea bream ($27), bathed in a flurry of apple cucumber and salted white peach, making for juicy, decadent mouthfuls of freshness?

How many bowls of pappardelle with duck does this town have to offer? But do any of them have the silky, glossy elegance of Tipo’s version ($44), the almost translucent quality of its noodles?

The tagliolini nero here ($35) qualifies as one of the city’s iconic dishes, its deep, black, oceanic goodness unmatched elsewhere. I realised, upon deciding to write this review, that I’d not eaten far beyond the entrees and pasta dishes on this menu – not that there’s much farther to go, just a fish and a steak and a few sides and desserts.

I rectified this by seeking out the fish of the day ($48), a crisp-skinned baby snapper fillet with puttanesca sauce, wonderfully buttery cabbage and olives, and decided that, while superb, I wish I’d just saved my appetite for more pasta.

Sweets here are simple, and lovely, and I thoroughly enjoyed a torta with apple and a fluffy ricotta filling ($17). But still: I think next time I’ll stuff myself so silly with noodles, as I have in the past, that dessert won’t be necessary.

Perhaps I swoon too much. After all, it’s just noodles. But Tipo 00 is one of those places that reminds you that life is a series of moments, and sometimes those moments are made infinitely better by a warm room, a friendly waiter, and something as ephemeral as the perfect bowl of pasta.