Studio Amaro | A Little Bit Trattoria, A Little Bit Disco

A Little Bit Trattoria, A Little Bit Disco

Studio Amaro feels less like a restaurant you visit and more like somewhere you can accidentally spend half your day.

Sitting on Chapel Street in Windsor, the idea is pretty simple: Italian food, good drinks and somewhere to keep the night moving once dinner is finished. The restaurant is open from lunch through late, while downstairs the basement comes alive on Friday and Saturday nights with DJs, cocktails and a distinctly different energy.

Upstairs is where the trattoria side comes through. Handmade pasta, focaccia, Italian-leaning plates and the kind of menu that works best when there are a few things in the middle of the table. It’s familiar without feeling too traditional, Studio Amaro is clearly more interested in capturing the spirit of Italian dining than recreating it exactly.

Then there’s the amaro.

More than 40 bottles sit across the venue’s collection, giving the bitter Italian digestivo a much bigger role than the obligatory bottle of Montenegro hidden somewhere behind the bar. You can drink it upstairs after dinner, work your way through it downstairs, or let the bartenders turn it into something a little more approachable.

That’s probably what Studio Amaro gets right.

Melbourne has plenty of great restaurants and plenty of great bars. Studio Amaro understands that sometimes you don’t really want to choose between them.

You want pasta at seven, amaro at nine and somewhere to dance by eleven.

168 Chapel Street, Windsor.