Gran Torino may not be the restaurant Neil Perry wanted but for now, it’s humming

What if Neil Perry’s greatest skill as a restaurateur wasn’t opening restaurants, but closing them? Consider this: Gran Torino, opened in August, is the veteran chef’s 25th restaurant in a lifetime of restaurants, stretching back to Blue Water Grill in 1986. But with Margaret, Next Door and freshly minted Bar Torino his only other operations, that leaves a long line of projects in the rearview mirror.

Selling them, moving them, rebranding them, quietly shuffling them off. Perry has become an expert at it. In Sydney hospitality, where institutions are rare and diners are fickle, this isn’t failure, it’s just one step on the road to the next thing.

Bigeye tuna with salsa verde.

That’s how we arrived at Gran Torino, the restaurant after the restaurant Perry called his last, the three-level Cantonese diner Song Bird, which unceremoniously closed less than a year after opening in Double Bay’s heritage-listed Gaden House. With Bobbie’s jazz bar in the basement (now Bar Torino), the project reportedly cost Perry $13 million.

Make no mistake. Gran Torino is not a smooth transition. This is damage control, an attempt to stem the bleeding. Aperol-branded umbrellas and tiramisu by the bowlful. Chefs tossing pasta in woks until the new induction plates are bumped in.

It’s tempting to hear the name Gran Torino and picture Neil Perry out the front of his house, pants hoisted up to his armpits Clint Eastwood style, gritting his teeth and scowling at the creditors. But a better movie comparison might be William Munny in Eastwood’s Unforgiven, the grizzled gunslinger reluctantly signing on for one last job to save the family farm.

If the plates are anything, though, they’re a reminder that past the name or celebrity, Neil Perry is Neil Perry because he’s a very good cook, obsessive about detail, depth of flavour and balance. Bone-on veal cotoletta, pounded flat, is crumbed to order then fried in a pan with olive oil and sage and butter until the crust will crack under a knife. Vitello tonnato sees thin slices of meat marinated and layered the old-fashioned way, then presented under a few elegant rounds of lemon and a scatter of capers. Tortelli is filled with pumpkins dried in the sun on the roof.

From left: Chefs Richard Purdue, Ervin Mumajesi and Neil Perry.

Perry has done Italian before, having run Rosetta in Melbourne and then Sydney. Both sold and eventually closed, but it’s great to see him back at it. Rosetta hewed classic, and Gran Torino does too, relying on impeccable sourcing and stripped-back presentation over 21st-century twists.

If you liked Rosetta, you will like Gran Torino. Not least because Richard Purdue, Perry’s wingman there and then at Margaret, is running the kitchen. The pair haven’t so much drawn inspiration from Rosetta as straight-up ripped dishes. The vitello tonnato? Rosetta tonnato. Squid-ink spaghetti alla chitarra tossed with an oily rubble of pistachios and prawns? Rosetta too. Sicilian cassata? Trippa alla romana? Pretty much the same, although the tripe could have more bite, especially at $39 (it used to be $19).

But then if you like Margaret, Gran Torino is for you too. Margaret’s head chef Ervin Mumajesi has taken Song Bird chef Mark Lee’s place (Lee’s gone the other way, taking Mumajesi’s role at Margaret), and there are striking similarities across the menus. Margaret’s Mishima bresaola with quince and olive oil? Gran Torino does it with parmesan, letting the sweet, complex folds of house-cured meat come to the foreground. The sweet Sardinian sauce of onion, pine nuts and currants served with swordfish? Here it is with bigeye tuna.

Is this laziness, a lack of ambition? Maybe it’s just good business: Margaret is already a hit, and the locals seem to have decided that their Chanel and Bottega Veneta look good with pasta and a spritz.

Veal cotoletta.

Perry made a damning statement in the Song Bird post-mortem when he claimed people weren’t prepared to pay top-dollar for Chinese food. If he’s talking about Double Bay locals, maybe. But they’re definitely prepared to pay for Italian – ask anyone who sells handmade noodles why they always have to justify their prices, when Italian restaurants can get away with murder for a bowl of spaghetti.

In a proof by contradiction, Perry has Song Bird’s veteran dumpling chefs on Gran Torino’s pasta. In their hands, agnolotti stuffed with pork, veal and guinea fowl ($42) are neat and plump, the tagliatelle for the bolognese ($36) has bounce and chew.

Speak with Perry and he might cite Marcella Hazan and Franca Manfredi recipes as inspiration, but Gran Torino isn’t really an Italian restaurant, it’s a Neil Perry restaurant, driven most by his relationships with producers. It’s why the fat slices of raw wild-caught kingfish, seasoned with salsa verde, have such length of flavour – or why the next day he’ll offer bigeye tuna. It’s why there are so many fish on for secondi, dressed so sparingly, including grilled swordfish that melts like silk on the palate.

Not every chef can call in Collette Dinnigan to oversee a one-week refit, and Perry has enough goodwill to pull a crowd, especially once Bar Torino really gets going downstairs. Gran Torino may not be the restaurant Perry wanted, but it’s the restaurant he has. Stately, a little worn, but with a good engine under the hood. For now, at least, it’s humming.

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