Umberto Espresso Bar

Coffee, panini and a chalkboard of specials

Proper coffee, panini and homestyle Italian cooking still set the register here, in a room that treats a short black and a plate of pasta as equally normal orders. The espresso bar is in the name and the name is honest. The menu is compact rather than encyclopaedic, and the specials are chalked on the wall and genuinely limited, disappearing once they sell out for the night.

The dish to know is the broccoli and chilli penne. It is the clearest example of the kitchen's approach, simple, sharp and better than its ingredient list suggests, and the pasta generally is what brings people back. Panini remain part of the public identity, which keeps the espresso-bar half of the operation honest.

A century-old shoe store on High Street

After ten years in its first High Street site, Umberto moved about a hundred metres up the road into a former shoe store more than a century old, going from forty seats to two hundred across several rooms. The owner wanted continuity rather than a redesign, so the new building kept the homely feeling of the original instead of arriving as a sleek renovation.

At street level there are two large entrance windows and dark-wood panelling, warm and traditional. The first floor holds two private dining areas, one opening onto a terrazzo-tiled balcony above High Street. Above that is Gigi Rooftop, which adds simple snacks and a view across Thornbury and Coburg at golden hour. One building, three registers: espresso bar, restaurant, rooftop.

Order the penne, then let the specials decide

Start with the broccoli and chilli penne. It is the most grounded order on the menu and the best way to understand the place through its cooking rather than through its size, and the pasta here is made to the standard people usually reserve for a grandmother's kitchen.

After that, read the wall. The specials change service by service and sell out, which makes them the most interesting thing on offer and the reason the menu feels alive rather than fixed. A panini and a coffee is the other way to use the room, the version that remembers what the place was before it grew. Upstairs, Gigi Rooftop is the option when the point is a drink and a view rather than a plate of pasta. The best way to read Umberto is as a neighbourhood espresso bar that grew into a multi-level Italian restaurant without losing the counter it started at.