Pizza e Birra bumps off an old friend

Who knows the fate of Tony Soprano? I know the fate of my old friend, Termini an Italian restaurant at the old St Kilda train station on Fitzroy St. Bumped off, dead, caput.I – my family – was there at the beginning when it was part of the Fitzroy Street tram terminal building site. Then you needed a key to pop around the corner to the loo.It offered well executed and reasonably priced Italian food. The vine leaves stuffed with ricotta and fried in butter with sage leaves was a perennial favourite, as was the fish stew. I also enjoyed the set lunches – two courses and a glass of wine – that seven years ago were $15.Now that’s all gone. Restaurateur Mauro Marcucci bought out his other partners in the joint. He’s reinvented the space as Pizza e Birra, a concept he honed in Sydney’s Surry Hills.

He’s decluttered the room, added contemporary graphic twists and opened-up the kitchen which now features a wood fired oven. Essentially the room remains the same with shelves of wine and produce and the same large distressed mirror as features of the room.Does it work? Yes. It’s not a bad reincarnation. Pizza e Birra (60a Fitzroy St, St Kilda, Vic 3182 +61 3 9537 3465) is casual with a short wine list of interesting local and italian wines. Boutique beers include the restaurant’s own Birra made by the Holgate Brewhouse in the Macedon ranges.

This place is really about pizza. Pizza made and stretched by hand, the thin crispy bubbly type that hasn’t seen a rolling pin. As Mauro, a Roman, recently told me:“…others use a rolling pin which rolls all the air out and we don’t.”