Pu open the big hand-shape doors at the grungy end of St Kilda’s Fitzroy Street and you enter Ronnie Di Stasio’s world.

Here, at Cafe Di Stasio, it always seems to be sundown with light raking the room through venetians and white jacketed waiters ferrying dishes to linen-draped tables.

Di Stasio is not always present — maitre d’ Mallory Wall is more likely to be overseeing service — but his devotion informs every aspect of his eponymous restaurant, from the carefully chosen music and sculpted masks on the walls to the fine house wine (from his Yarra Valley vineyard), and the way some pasta is served: a tad firmer than al dente.

The cooking here has always been impeccable. Still is. At a recent lunch, angel hair pasta (tagliolini) came furled with spanner crab, a perfect fillet of turbot swam with a perfect pea salad, and roast duck — its skin burnished to a coppery sheen — was pure luxe with spaetzle.

The “slow food seasonal lunch” (two courses, a glass of wine and Lavazza coffee for $40) is good value. Seventeen dollars for a litre of Acqua Panna mineral water? Not so much.

Don’t forget, there’s a bar next door, well suited to coffee or a digestive. You might find Ronnie there.

Must eat dish: angel hair pasta with spanner crab