This Subi eatery remains an essential WA dining destination

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Over the past decade or so, it seems like “modern Italian” cooking in this country has got much more international.

Chefs have been reported spiking their ragus with soy and fish sauce. Hobart’s tiny, free-spirited Fico serves a tasting menu where yuzu, house-made umeboshi (salted plums) and other Japanese elements feature prominently. The Thai-talian pasta movement – a movement that started with the sai oua pasta at Sydney’s brilliant Boon Cafe that paired spicy Thai pork sausage with fusilli made of kamut flour – continues to gain traction as Melbourne fine diners serve culurgiones (Sardinia’s famous pleated dumplings) filled with prawn mousse and pooled in red curry.

As intriguing – and perhaps inevitable – as the globalisation of Italian food might be, modernising one of the planet’s great cuisines isn’t just about sneaking exotic ingredients into the shopping trolley when Mum’s not looking. It’s about thoughtfully considering and combining past and present; considering the needs, wants and habits of today’s diners; not putting curly parsley on everything as a matter of course. It’s this kind of thing that makes Subiaco’s Lulu La Delizia such an essential Perth dining address.

Although this pert 46-seat dining room was opened by Ivana Pereza and Joel Valvasori-Pereza in late 2016, Valvasori-Pereza is undoubtedly the face of Lulu. And over the past seven years, more of his DNA has crept into Lulu’s make-up. The restaurant is named after our man’s grandmother. Framed portraits of chef Marco Pierre White (who cites Lulu as his favourite restaurant in Australia) and blues singer Muddy Waters (the soundtrack leans heavily into blues and soul) painted by Valvasori-Pereza line the columns of the predominantly black room punctuated by tables and date-night-ready high-tops by the window. (On sunny days, staff can seat around 20 additional guests outside.) The menu, however, is where old mate’s influence shines strongest.

Although Valvasori-Pereza defected to the front of house in 2021, Lulu’s menu is still heavily shaped by the food traditions of Friuli, the northern Italian region family Valvasori hails from. Whereas southern Italian food feels sunny, bright and runs on olive oil, traditional Friulano cooking is about woody mountain spices, butter and pork: all characteristics that are present and accounted for in many Lulu signatures.

Slices of dense, crusty country-style bread ($5) appear tableside with a wedge of cultured butter and a deeply flavoured vegetable sugo. Utterly comforting meatballs ($24) – a quartet of loose, crumbly pork meatballs, gently poached in passata and riding high on a hillock of silky, buttery polenta that can’t possibly be good for you – followed Valvasori-Pereza from Lalla Rookh in the CBD (he was the opening head chef) to Subi. So did tagliatelle and ragu ($38), a pasta classic that adds veal to the party as well as brilliantly toothsome noodles.

With Valvasori-Pereza no longer on the pans, the kitchen is commanded by head chef James Higgs, a member of the brigade since 2017. These classics are in safe hands, as is Lulu’s reputation as one of Australia’s finest destinations for house-made pasta. (A recent special of deep, cup-like orecchiette paired with supple prawns, chilli and garlic is a reminder that quizzing staff about pasta specials is always a good idea.)

While there are those who seek out Lulu to revisit the familiar, others are lured by the tantalising prospect of the new. These are the tables that invariably give the remote to the (confident, assured) staff and go the shared banquet ($89 per person): a six-course romp starring off-menu dishes, specials and lessons aplenty on Lulu’s triple-S house style: sweet, sharp and (well) seasoned.

Things might kick off with jagged pillows of fried dough filled with roast pumpkin and topped with a slice of chevre and squiggles of rosemary butterscotch; then move to raw tuna doused in rosemary vinegar and olive oil with matchsticks of pickled beetroot for crunch (a cool contrast to the long-standing juniper-cured kingfish, $26). If you’re lucky, the kitchen will still be doing what simple-minded folk (ahem) might call a pork spring roll: a cigar of terrific pork terrine wrapped in filo pastry that’s deep-fried till crisp without and creamy within. Chinese and Italian food purists wept. Open-minded eaters, meanwhile, cheered loudly, then took another squiz at the by-the-glass options.

It’s worth noting that Lulu La Delizia identifies as an osteria: an Italian style of eatery that, compared to the trattoria, is traditionally more casual, more affordable and wine-focused. While Lulu – like many osterie around the planet – is no cheap eat, the commitment to good drinking remains and the cellar here goes big on alcohol synonymous with Italy’s north: think orange skin-contact wines, alpine reds and potent grappa. In the past, exuberant sommeliers could get enthusiastic drinkers into trouble come bill-time, but in light of recent price-hikes around town, Lulu’s prices now feel like they’re a little more in line with others.

However you navigate the drinks, desserts ensure every meal ends on an up-note. The tight sweets section remains pretty much unchanged since 2016, largely because the kitchen got it right at the start. There’s an ethereal tiramisu spiked with a heroic amount of grappa; crisp twists of fried dough known as crostoli dusted with cinnamony castor sugar; plus the panna cotta vera, a “true” all-cream panna cotta of slightly unnerving lushness. These sweets have been around for so long that if most experienced Perth eaters woke up dazed and confused Leonard Shelby Memento-style with Polaroids (or a bloated camera roll) of any of these desserts, they’d know to ring Lulu La Delizia straight away, pre-emptively apologise, then double-check that they paid their bill last night.

While the above scenario is a distinct possibility – see previous paragraph about the dangerously good drinks offering – I hope it isn’t par-for-course for eaters that get the chance to dine here. So much of the Lulu’s experience just feels so right for 2024: from the size of the carte and the pace of the meal to the effortless way the kitchen melds tradition (everything is served on white plates) and innovation. Lulu’s isn’t just a paradigm of modern Italian dining. It’s a standard-bearer for modern dining, full stop. I don’t want to imagine this city’s restaurant scene without it.