The Italian Art of the Weekend Lunch: La Dolce Vita in Surry Hills

Sydney has got good at dinner. The language of the evening reservation — the two-hour window, the early or late sitting, the calculated gap between courses — is one most diners here understand by instinct. But the Italian model has always placed a different meal at the centre of things.

In Rome, il pranzo — the midday meal — has historically been the long one. Antipasti to open the table. A primo, then a secondo. Bread throughout. Wine poured without urgency. The afternoon unspooling well past the point where most Sydney tables would have asked for the bill. The evening meal, la cena, is lighter by comparison — almost an afterthought.

Urban life has compressed the weekday pranzo considerably. But the weekend version holds. In Rome’s neighbourhoods — Trastevere, Prati, Testaccio — Saturday and Sunday lunch still stretches past the second glass, past the dessert, into something closer to an afternoon than a meal. There’s a phrase for this kind of time: dolce far niente. The sweetness of doing nothing in particular, of simply being somewhere good.

At 170 Grammi Pizzeria on Crown Street, Surry Hills, the weekend lunch takes this idea seriously.

In Italy, Lunch Has Always Been the Main Event

The Roman week is structured around a different rhythm to the Sydney one. In a traditional Roman household — or at a table in one of the city’s neighbourhood trattorie — Saturday and Sunday lunch is the meal the week builds toward. Not dinner. The midday table.

The logic becomes clear once you’ve experienced it. A lunch eaten well, with wine and multiple courses, still leaves the afternoon ahead of you. You can walk it off, sit somewhere with a coffee, talk until the shadows shift. The meal doesn’t mark the end of the day; it marks its midpoint. You arrive at the evening lighter for having given the best part of your appetite to the best part of the food.

This is the Italian model for weekend time: the meal is not something you fit around other plans. It is the plan.

Roman food particularly suits the long-table format. Antipasti to begin, pizza or pasta as the centrepiece, a shared dessert to close — these are dishes that pace well across an afternoon, each with its own role, none competing with the others. The woodfired kitchen at 170 Grammi is built for exactly this kind of eating: food that arrives off the oven with purpose, that rewards the table rather than just the individual plate.

What La Dolce Vita Actually Means

La dolce vita — the sweet life — has picked up a great many connotations since Fellini used it in 1960. In its everyday Italian sense, though, it describes something quieter and more attainable: a life with pleasure built into it. Good food, good company, time to enjoy both without rushing toward whatever comes next.

The phrase maps directly onto the weekend lunch. You’re not fitting a meal around anything. The meal is the thing.

It’s the same idea behind Rome’s caffè culture — espresso taken standing at the bar, properly, not en route to somewhere else — and behind the Sunday passeggiata, the neighbourhood walk without particular destination. Pleasure that is complete in itself rather than filling the gap between obligations.

The La Dolce Vita sharing menu at 170 Grammi takes this idea literally. Available every Saturday and Sunday from 12pm to 4pm, it’s designed for tables that want to eat the Italian way — properly, without watching the clock.

The La Dolce Vita Sharing Menu at 170 Grammi

How It Works

The menu is $65 per person and includes an entrée, your choice of pizza or pasta, and four drinks from the restaurant’s curated selection. It’s designed for sharing — dishes moving across the table rather than arriving one-per-person — and works equally well for a couple looking for a proper Italian afternoon as it does for a small group claiming a booth for the duration.

The timing matters. Arriving in the earlier part of the 12pm–4pm window gives you the whole afternoon to stretch into, without the slight pressure that a full room can create. By early afternoon on a Sunday, the atmosphere — the noise of a busy Italian dining room, the woodfired smells, the sound of glasses — is part of what the experience is about.

Pricing is accurate at the time of publication but may be subject to change.

What to Order

The entrée section is where 170 Grammi shows its Roman street-food credentials. The Supplì di Riso al Telefono — Rome’s definitive fried rice ball, filled with San Marzano pomodoro and La Stella buffalo mozzarella — is the right place to begin. The Schiacciata con Mortadella, a crispy Roman flatbread stuffed with mortadella, reads more like a market snack than a formal starter, which is exactly what it should be. For something more composed, the Prosciutto e Burrata — Prosciutto San Daniele with La Stella buffalo latticini burrata and grissini — is clean, premium, and all but impossible to improve on.

On the pizza side, the kitchen’s most Roman choices are the A’ Carbonara (white base, Pecorino Romano DOP, guanciale, free-range egg yolk, black pepper) and the Amatriciana (San Marzano, guanciale, Pecorino Romano, basil). Both are rooted in the four classical preparations of Roman cooking — Carbonara, Amatriciana, Cacio e Pepe, Gricia — applied to a woodfired La Tonda Romana base with the same restraint you’d find at a serious Rome kitchen. The Margherita Classica is the right call if you want to understand the base first: San Marzano, La Stella buffalo mozzarella, Pecorino Romano, Parmigiano Reggiano, basil, Coratina EVOO — nothing more than it needs to be, and nothing less.

For pasta, the Rigatoni Amatriciana — slow-cooked guanciale, San Marzano, Pecorino Romano, chilli, black pepper — traces the same flavour logic as the pizza version with a different weight and texture. The Pappardelle alla Vaccinara, a slow-cooked oxtail ragù, is the kind of dish the afternoon was invented for.

Drinks from the curated selection pair well with the woodfired food coming out of the kitchen. For a closer look at what works alongside Roman pizza — from Italian whites and orange wines to the right aperitivo — the drinks pairing guide covers the options in detail.

Why Weekend Lunch Sometimes Beats Dinner

Evening dining at 170 Grammi is excellent. But the weekend lunch has qualities worth arguing for.

Light, to begin with. Crown Street at noon — even on an overcast Sydney day — feels more open than it does at 7pm. The room fills differently, more gradually, with less of the compressed energy that Friday and Saturday evenings generate. Early tables on a Saturday have an ease to them that the dinner sitting doesn’t quite replicate.

There’s also the practical case. Lunch is the right time to eat generously. The meal can be rich — the Pappardelle alla Vaccinara, the tiramisù, the affogato, the second pizza landing mid-table — and you still have the rest of the afternoon. The heaviness of a heavy dinner becomes the pleasantness of a full afternoon. These are different experiences, and the Italian lunch has always understood which one is better.

Sydney’s dining culture has long leaned toward sharing and variety — small plates, large tables, long evenings. The La Tonda Romana format maps exactly onto that instinct: multiple pizzas across the table, contrasting toppings, slices that travel. Weekend lunch gives that format the time it genuinely deserves, rather than fitting it into the compressed logic of a two-hour dinner window.

Planning Your Table

The La Dolce Vita menu runs Saturday and Sunday from 12pm to 4pm. Booking is strongly recommended — Sunday in particular fills consistently across all sittings, and Saturday lunchtime has been increasingly popular on the back of the weekend trading hours that run Friday through Sunday from noon.

For tables of six or more, it’s worth reading through the group dining guide before you book — it covers how to structure the table, how many pizzas to order, and what to ask when confirming a larger reservation at a Roman pizza restaurant.

One practical note: a 10% surcharge applies on Sundays and public holidays at 170 Grammi, consistent with standard NSW licensed venue practice. Worth factoring into the budget when you’re comparing your Saturday and Sunday options.

The Italian weekend lunch doesn’t ask you to be anywhere in particular, or to finish by any particular time. The La Dolce Vita sharing menu at 170 Grammi is built on exactly that premise: good food, the right company, and no compelling reason to leave before the afternoon is done.

👉 Book your table for the La Dolce Vita sharing menu