A look back at the opening of Popolo 10 years ago is a look back at the before times of Brisbane’s restaurant scene. James Street was in its infancy as a dining destination, Fish Lane (as we now know it) hardly existed. Howard Smith Wharves wasn’t much more than a few heritage-listed buildings in a vacant lot scattered with detritus from the 2011 floods.

Even the way we ate was different, with shared dining a novelty, says Popolo co-owner Andrew Baturo.

“Italian culture, and things related to Italian pop culture, always have that big energy with families coming together over dinner and plonking everything down on the table,” he says. “Everyone’s serving everyone, there are big jugs of wine. There’s that real family atmosphere. But when I looked around Brisbane, few people were doing that. It was primi and secondi, entrees and mains – it was all very structured. Shared dining hadn’t taken off yet.”

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In the past decade’s bum rush of new restaurants, it’s easy to underestimate Popolo’s quiet influence – particularly in the first five years after it opened. Named after the Piazza del Popolo in the centre of Rome, it was an Italian restaurant that made shared dining seem entirely natural in this city, and it quickly became a lynchpin in the South Bank’s River Quay Green dining precinct.

“It’s been so popular over the years, but it took a little while,” Baturo says. “It stuck out a little bit down here. South Bank was still very much orientated towards the other end of the parklands, post-Expo 88. It took a while for people to realise they have a really good dining precinct that’s not in the CBD or the inner suburbs.”

Now, of course, shared dining is everywhere. Italian is everywhere. Terrific restaurants are everywhere. Popolo reopens this week after a protracted three-month refurbishment, but you wonder if Baturo and co-owners Paul Piticco and Denis Sheahan (who, together, own DAP & Co, which also operates The Gresham and Walter’s Steakhouse) ever considered retooling the restaurant as something else entirely.

“I understand why you might ask that but we have 10 years of trial and error behind us and 10 years of celebrations. There’s a fondness for this place,” Baturo says. “Popolo’s a strong brand and it’s been really comforting and also humbling to see the number of people on social media asking, ‘When are you gonna open? We can’t wait to come back down.’”

A refurbishment, though, is an opportunity for reinvention, and this is very much “Popolo 2.0”, as Baturo calls it. About the only thing the same is the open-air layout and the cracking views across the river towards the city. Gone is the themed fit-out with its red neon and wall art, replaced by a much more understated treatment of terracotta tiles, arched mirrors and a parquet floor imported second-hand from a heritage shopping centre in France (it was “unbelievably expensive, I don’t even want to talk about it,” Baturo says, laughing). It’s light, bright and in harmony with the outside green space, and reflects DAP & Co and Baturo’s confidence after 10 years of creating restaurants and bars.

The food has been refined too. Catching the eye among the small plates are produce-led dishes such as braised baby octopus with red wine, Ligurian olives and lemon mascarpone, and truffled burrata with olive oil and toasted bread. The short selection of pizza remains but the mains have been given a more sophisticated do-over. Carried across from the old menu are a pappardelle with braised duck-leg ragu and Grana Padano, and a linguine dish that matches Moreton Bay bug with a spanner crab and lobster bisque. But there’s also cappellacci filled with buffalo mozzarella and burnt butter in a pumpkin puree with pancetta and toasted almonds, and conchiglie (shell pasta) with pork and fennel sausage and spicy cime di rapa (broccoli rabe). Other large plates include Skull Island prawns with garlic, chilli, capers and a butter-lemon sauce; roasted spatchcock with olive oil, lemon, garlic, hot spices and rosemary; and Wagyu rump tagliata with Tuscan kale, cannellini beans and aged vincotto.

“Our chef, Francesco [Vitagliano] – his food is just incredible,” Baturo says. “There’s a level of authenticity to it. People have come out of Covid and they weren’t buying their steak from Woolies, they were buying it from us at Walter’s. They were going through the roof in terms of what they were treating themselves to and they’ve come out of the pandemic saying, ‘You know what? I like Dom [Perignon]. I like a good steak. I like organic this and sustainable that.’

“What you put on the plate now needs to be elevated. It would have to be anyway – there are so many great Italian restaurants opening in this city. We’re competing with those guys.”

For drinks, there’s a mix of imported Italian and local craft beers, a jazzed-up cocktail list that includes a Negroni of the week, and a 75-bottle wine list that prioritises drops sourced from across the Italian peninsula.

Still, Baturo says, the spirit of Popolo hasn’t changed. It still feels comfortable. It still feels approachable, as suitable for families as it is couples dining at the two-tops next to South Bank’s Clem Jones Promenade.

“We understand our customer really well down here,” he says. “We know it’s not James Street. We know it’s not Riverside. We go where the customer feels comfortable and never condescend to them. That’s what you’d feel like when you go to your nonna’s house. You feel comfortable. You feel like you’re among friends.”

Popolo
3 Sidon Street, South Brisbane
(07) 3846 7784

Hours:
Wed–Sun 12pm–late

popolodining.com