The garlic bread alone is worth a trip to Bocca on the Sunshine Coast. More similar to a giant puffer fish, or perhaps an overinflated football, than the standard sliced baguette version, this take on the Italian restaurant favourite is glorious.

The bread, forged from the same dough that is used in the establishment’s pizzas, arrives straight from the oven, all puffed up and light as a feather.

The momentous mound is topped with a drizzle of rosemary oil and cloves of hot, roasted garlic, which are perfect for squashing into chunks of the bread.

Bocca, on the ground level of an apartment block in a large, new development at Bokarina, between Mooloolaba and Caloundra, is across the road from the beach, which is hidden behind thickly vegetated dunes.

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We’re walk-ins for an early lunch and are seated at one of the tables shaded by orange umbrellas out the front while, inside, many of the restaurant’s 150 seats are already occupied.

Bocca threw open its doors in June, and given it’s another enterprise from Tony Kelly and the team behind Maroochydore’s popular Market Bistro, it’s no surprise it’s busy. Kelly’s group has also had mega-success with pan-Asian eateries Rice Boi at Mooloolaba and Giddy Geisha in Maroochydore among its many ventures. The well-run Market Bistro’s executive chef Harry Lilai, with a wealth of experience heading restaurants in Melbourne, and manager Luke Stringer, are co-owners of Bocca and it shows.

Here the kitchen is turning out breads (there’s also parmesan and oregano or sea salt), antipasti, salumi and cheese, pastas and risottos, main courses of crumbed chicken breast, roasted market fish and osso buco, as well as 12 pizzas cooked after a 24 to 48-hour fermentation process in the stone-based Moretti pizza oven imported from Italy.

Calamari fritti with lemon aioli ($25) is light and crisply fried while three fleshy king prawns resting in a shallow pond of forthright, chilli-heated diavola sauce ($27) are a fiery wake-up call that’s easily toned down by not dredging them in too much sauce if that’s a problem. 

There’s a mixed leaf salad ($12) of bouncing fresh cos leaves flecked with herbs and a bright, acidic vinaigrette ($12).

On a different occasion, just after the restaurant opening, a funghi pizza ($26) with a very light scattering of mushrooms and porcini and cheese – a combination of buffalo mozzarella, taleggio, fior di latte and truffled pecorino – sports terrific dough with charry spots but is let down by a slight delay in getting to the table, while a linguine marina ($35) with chunks of fish and shellfish in a chilli and garlic-accented sugo is spot on.

Food arrives quickly and wait staff are brisk, experienced, and across the menu. The interior is light and bright with orange accents, lots of blonde wood, trailing plants, loads of windows and foldaway doors, with a relaxed, casual vibe.

Drinks include cocktails such as the Mandarino in Milan, a spritz complete with mandarin segments and Aperol, while the wine list wanders the globe across a variety of price points, but with strong representation from Italy.

As with Market Bistro, there’s an adjacent bottle shop owned by the group, where diners can choose a bottle to drink in-house for a $20 corkage fee, or make a selection to go with the takeaway they’re picking up from Bocca.

A small cannoli siciliana ($5), the pastry case filled with lemon-flavoured buffalo ricotta and encrusted with pistachios is a fine choice with a well-made coffee.

Otherwise, sweet tooths may opt for panna cotta, chocolate cake with blackberries and crème fraiche or a hefty slab of tiramisu.

Bocca may be new but it’s definitely not flying under the radar for very good reason.

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