Don’t let the brash exterior colour scheme of Pucci’s on Moorabool St deceive you. Far from serving up just your standard takeaway fare, it is also home to serious good Italian cuisine.
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Granted, the river end of Moorabool St – with a drive through coffee shop on one side and a furniture store on the other – is not the most obvious of locations for a cafe. But when the head chef of a one-hat restaurant says it needs checking out, it would be remiss not to follow that advice slavishly.
Take the time to make the effort to find Pucci’s and you will be rewarded with a culinary hidden gem.
Michaelangelo and Ekaterina Pucci. Photo: Ginger + Mint
“It’s like being back in Italy,” one diner was heard to remark last week as she savoured pillowy ricotta baked with mozzarella and parmesan in a tomato sauce.
The sign out the front may say Pucci’s Caffe Rosticceria with the promise of “seriously good Italian” but nearly everything else – the external bright orange colour scheme and the interior murals – harks back to the building’s previous life as home to BK’s Takeaway. But looks can be deceiving.
Yes you can order standard takeaway fare – toasties, sausage rolls, chips, potato cakes and dim sims – but you can also tuck into cabbage rolls, light and fluffy potato croquettes, pasta cooked to order and delicate tiramisu.
How many other places can you walk into and can get your dim sims and a bespoke risotto?
And it’s all thanks to the husband and wife team of Michelangelo and Ekaterina Pucci.
The pasta is highly recommended. Photo: Ginger + Mint
The pasta is made fresh at the venue. Photo: Ginger + Mint
Local diners may recognise the Pucci name. Prior to the move into Geelong, Michelangelo and Ekaterina were cooking up a storm in St Leonards. Pucci’s has also been in Ballarat, where Michelangelo took over a Skipton St pub and transformed it into a go-to dining destination for more than a decade.
Born in Italy, Michelangelo was 15 when he went to catering school. After he got his diploma he went to work at the Hotel Savoy In Rome, thus beginning a 50-year career of working in five-star establishments. He was 23 when he came to Australia and was a one-time maitre d at The Hotel Windsor as well as working in well-regarded establishments like Mietta’s and the Cliveden Room in the old Melbourne Hilton.
Yet even with all his experience, Michelangelo says his latest venture with Ekaterina is a “totally different kind of thing for us”.
In part that’s because they’re starting from scratch in a location with no real passing foot traffic. But it’s clear from the number of workers from the nearby car yards who call in at lunchtime that word is spreading.
The building is hard to miss. Photo: Ginger + Mint
The couple don’t compromise on quality. Photo: Ginger + Mint
They opened in December and are still trying to get their name out but Michelangelo drew a line in the sand immediately over an Italian staple – coffee. He got rid of the pod coffee machine and in its place installed a canary yellow La San Marco espresso machine and a decent coffee grinder. He says they are the only outlet in Geelong using Segafredo Zanetti coffee beans.
They’re tailoring their price points to meet their clientele’s expectations and while Michelangelo says they’re selling food “as reasonably as we can”, they’re not compromising on quality. The pasta is cooked to order and even the risotto is cooked fresh and well worth the 20-minute wait.
Michelangelo happily recounts how a social worker from Drysdale who used to come every week to Pucci’s in St Leonards for mushroom risotto was overjoyed that he could finally taste it again after a fruitless two-year search.
While Ekaterina makes the gnocchi – either potato or ricotta – by hand and then freezes if before cooking it as required, high quality Italian dried pasta is also on hand. But it’s her sauces that are key to the dishes.
All the food is made with love. Photo: Ginger + Mint
Meatballs made from pork, lamb and beef mince slowly soften as they are cooked in a tomato sauce for 2-3 hours. The ragu will cook for 3½ hours.
“We can do any sauce, most Italian sauces – apart from the ragu and a few other sauces which have to be cooked a long time,” Michelangelo says.
“We have the basis for everything, so we can make anything when the time comes.
“The sauces are very important because the pasta can be any pasta. If you know how to cook pasta and you have a good sauce … the sauce gives the flavour.”
Michelangelo says they still get joy when people ask for something that they like to cook. But the joy should be going both ways. Moorabool St is lucky to have Pucci’s, even if it doesn’t know it yet.
Pucci’s at 496 Moorabool St, South Geelong, is open 7.30am-3pm Monday-Friday.