When a champagne-swigging friend was in town looking for a place to line her stomach, the newest edition to the Parkhurst strip, Stella E Luna Cornuti sprang to mind.
The latest Cornuti - there is one in Illovo and another in Plettenberg Bay - inhabits the space recently evacuated by the candy-striped awning of The Leopard, which has pounced into Melville.
Johannesburg hardly needs another restaurant that serves the pizza and pasta staple, but this consideration isn't really fair when you take into account that Cornuti has been perfecting these starchy dishes for years.
They don't take reservations and it's usually packed, so we had to wait. We did this on high stools around a strangely positioned column outside, drinking strong cocktails.
The menu has a wide variety of pizzas, a few pastas - most of them with a seafood slant - salads and some mains. I had a seafood pasta and my friend had a pizza, which was so delicious that she managed to devour it all.
The third in our party had a salad, which she said was good, but nothing unusual. So, evidently pizza is the thing to have at Stella E Luna - it's the dish that Cornuti is known for.
- Stella E Luna Cornuti is on the corner of 12th Street and 4th Avenue, Parkhurst, Johannesburg. Call 011-447-0669.
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