New Da Orazio brings a fishing boat to Rushcutters Bay but leaves the pizza in Bondi

Italian chef Orazio D’Elia is in the rarefied air of owning one of just two Good Food Guide hatted pizzerias in Sydney, so what’s he doing opening a pizza-free restaurant this week at Rushcutters Bay?

D’Elia doesn’t want to be squeezed into one lane of the autostrade and says the 80-seat trattoria is a companion piece to his Bondi pizza and porchetta destination Da Orazio, not a copy.

“There’s a lot of pizza around,” he said. “If you want a good pizza, go to Bondi. I want to show my skills as a chef, and trattorias in Italy don’t do pizza.”

Growing up in Campania, where mozzarella runs through the veins of its citizens, D’Elia started his professional food journey in a local restaurant rather than one of Naples’ famed pizzerias. He tutored himself on regional cooking by taking seasonal jobs in restaurants across Italy.

Pizza skills were honed on the side, and there’s evidence of that DNA in the construction of some of the dishes at Trattoria Da Orazio. Take the passata in his spaghetto napoletano: D’Elia scoured the country in search of passata-worthy tomatoes, eventually sourcing from growers in the Southern Highlands.

“They’re so sweet,” he said. His work with local smallgoods producers for pizza toppings has also come in useful, and Trattoria Da Orazio has a bespoke mortadella on its menu infused with ’nduja.

The Rushcutters Bay site he’s chosen for the trattoria has plenty of personal significance for its new operator. It’s where D’Ellia first hit his stride locally 14 years ago, as head chef at Popolo (in recent years Marta operated there).

“I gave it everything I had — I worked seven days a week for five months,” he said of his big break. “(It’s) where I found my voice as a chef.”

D’Elia teamed up with local designer Adrian Condina, who worked on the rebrand and global roll-out of Ferrari’s fashion and lifestyle projects, to update the space with rich, green patterned floor tiles, embroidered Italian linen curtains and a charcoal grill. A vintage Italian fishing boat will display daily seafood specials; on weekends, the trattoria will host Da Orazio Pasticceria pop-ups, plus a Sunday ragu special.

He laments the rise in price of rabbit that ruled out the return of Popolo’s prized rabbit ragu, but there are still plenty of other interesting twists to the opening menu. Tortelli Milanese, for instance, is a kitchen flex of pasta made with gremolata, filled with osso bucco and served with saffron-infused cream.

With a deluge of Italian venues still the way, including Riva at Rose Bay, Vito’s in the city and a reboot of the former Ursula’s site in Paddington (adding to newcomers Grappa at The Rocks, Pizza Sotto and Bar Bruno) are Italian restaurants reaching saturation point in Sydney? D’Elia thinks not.

“People love Italian food, you can have it every day. It’s clean, and its beauty is its simplicity.”