The concise Italian menu is the chorus here while the wine takes centre stage. Meaning “fountain” in Italian, Fontana is a place to quench your thirst with tasty snacks to match.
Every city holds close some ghosts of restaurants past, those legendary “you had to be there” dining memories that linger in our collective food amygdala. In Sydney, one of those is the pop-up Don Peppino’s, which lived its short but lively life in an old nightclub at the dodgier end of Paddington from 2018. There, friends and colleagues Daniel Johnston, Harry Levy and Ivey Wawn served up banging regional Italian food and natural wines in a space that felt permanently on the precipice of a party.
When it shuttered, the trio went off and busied themselves in some of the city’s other beloved eating institutions – Alberto’s Lounge, Porcine and Café Paci, respectively – but now they’ve fused themselves back together at Fontana in Redfern. Is it Don’s 2.0? Yes and no. “We’re doing lots of little regional dishes and natural wines – that’s like Don’s,” says Ivey. “And it’s definitely a place where you can have a good time, where you can eat something yummy and drink something you haven’t tried before. You might make friends with the table next to you, or friends with the waiter. There’s that feeling that it’s all a bit exciting and it could turn into a party.” So far so Don’s, but we’re all a bit older and wiser than we were when it closed in 2020, and Fontana doesn’t really have that same sense of maybe-mayhem or Don’s decadence. The A-grade food, wine and service is still exactly as we remember, though. Think of it as Don’s Grows Up.
The wine list is organised in colours, and Ivey likes to explore all sorts of secret corners and microclimates of the vinous world, particularly around Italy and Spain. For that reason, it’s a good idea to get some guidance, unless you’re intimately familiar, for instance, with the warm breezes that hit a small vineyard in northern Italy to ripen the nosiola grapes grown by a viticulturist called Gino Pedrotti. If you’re not (and who is among us?), just give your server an idea – something fresh and minerally, or plump and juicy? – and you’ll be steered well. Pleasingly, price points are uniformly reasonable, both by the bottle and the glass.
Once you’ve finished eating, you might want to move things to the bar to have a crack at the fabulous digestivo menu, which includes juicy liqueurs and a nice sherry or two.
The menu here never stands still for long, but the structure is a constant: there’ll be a solid selection of snacks – as many as 10 to choose from – that might include handmade fresh ricotta, cured meats and fresh-baked taralli, Italy’s little fennel-seed breadsticks coiled like pig’s tails. There’ll generally be some form of ceviche-style dish, and if you’ve hit the season for the Roman artichoke, snag it. On to the pasta – there’ll be plenty of that, including a dish with something rich and meaty like a kangaroo ragù, and Don Peppino’s mainstay ceci e tria, a chickpea three-punch topped with a coronet of fried pasta. You’ll generally find two main courses, perhaps a swordfish fillet heaped with fresh herbs or a Milanese crumbed cutlet.
The snacks are really the stars, which is what makes this such a great drinking spot first and foremost. If you don’t feel up for attacking a great slab of veal, then simply don’t; just go hard on the top of the menu and keep the drinks coming.
