Forget everything you think you know about “fusion.” While half of Sydney is still doing the tentative gochujang-mayo-on-a-taco thing, a new restaurant at Circular Quay has quietly gone: what if Venice and Rome had a several-century-long situationship with the Silk Road (this is history btw. Not a hypothetical). And we just… hard leaned all the way into it?
Enter Spezia – Italian for “spice,” which depending on who you ask, might just be the most no-nonsense restaurant name of the year. Or exactly the kind of confidence you’d expect from a menu built by a three-Michelin-star chef. Given Executive chef Jae Bang’s fresh stint at Norway’s Re-naa, we’re going with the latter.
At Spezia doing East-meets-West isn’t a gimmick or a garnish.
Instead, every single dish gets a hit of the spice trail that once wound its way through those iconic Italian piazzas. So, instead of your standard risotto, you get a version drenched in saffron and burnt spring onion. Somewhere, a nonna is either furious or taking notes.
Then there’s the duck ragu caserece – a freshly made pasta featuring long pepper, white wine, sage and olives. (Best served with a side of “I told you there is more to pasta than Bolognese!)
Even the basics get the treatment: pane soffiato is baked fresh to order – and pairs perfectly with the Earl Grey and Powdered Tomato topped butter; grilled octopus comes in strong with Calabrian chilli, samphire and cucumer; and the Panna Cotta goes rogue with lemon leaf, grapefruit and spumante.
The kitchen makes its own dukkah spice mix from scratch too. The kind of unglamorous, unphotographable groundwork that separates “pretty good” from “worked at a three-Michelin-star restaurant and a genuine Copenhagen legend, thanks.”
Speaking of pedigree: Bang trained at Re-naa, brought head chef Aaron Caccia along – another Re-naa alum who also did time at noma in Copenhagen, only one of the most influential restaurants on the planet. This is not a chef “getting playful” with spice for the Instagram caption. This is serious, hard-won technique wearing a very good sense of humour.
The wine list is equally unserious about restraint: 500-plus bottles from Italy, Australia and beyond, 36 available by the glass, plus a cocktail list for anyone keen to skip straight to sfizi – Italian for “little indulgences,” and frankly the only life philosophy worth having on a Friday night.
The room deserves its own review too. Spezia has taken over the once-private courtyards of the heritage-listed former Department of Lands building on Bridge Street – a building so locked-off from the public that most Sydneysiders have only ever admired its sandstone from the footpath – and turned it into a 130-seat open-air piazza inside the new The Lands by Capella precinct. Italian red awnings, Breccia Rosso honed marble, a Tangier-red Venetian-finished bar, and corridors where horse-drawn carriages once did actual three-point turns. You’re not just booking a table, you’re booking access to a building most of Sydney didn’t know it was allowed into.
Spezia is open for lunch and dinner, Tuesday to Saturday, with breakfast rumoured to be joining the lineup.
Where: The Lands by Capella, Bridge Street, Circular Quay
What: Italian food with a genuine Silk Road streak, from a three-Michelin-star pedigree kitchen
Book: spezia.com.au
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