Dark, moody, buzzy – that’s the vibe at the new Enzo & Sons Italian eatery on Caxton Street. Taking over the space vacated by Statler & Waldorf, it feels like more of an intimate bar than a loud Italian restaurant, with diners greeted with a glowing wall of spirits and bartenders shaking a range of Campari and Aperol-charged cocktails.

The bar is a place to linger, chat to the staff and sip your way through the list, which expands into a cracking range of wines – many Italian-accented. For eating comfort, though, it’s through to the cosy, exposed brick-walled main dining area with pops of greenery and studded leather booths, or out the back to rows of heavy picnic benches beside a cheerful, bright mural.

The menu offers a range of antipasti – kingfish crudo with blood orange, mortadella with mustard fruits, meatballs or, perhaps, chilli, garlic and lemon-spiked calamari – alongside salads, pizza and pasta.

‘Zucchini carpaccio’, a clean salad of lemon-dressed zucchini ribbons – is the perfect match for the rustic, cheese-heavy, spanner crab lasagne. The pasta dish lacks the elegance and refinement of Il Centro’s version, which made crab lasagne a Queensland icon in the 90s, but its chunky texture makes it a pleasant enough, albeit homely, incarnation.

The star, however, is the margherita pizza. The 24-hour fermented dough delivers a spot-on crust and the restrained use of sweet San Marzano tomatoes and fior di latte make a pizza worth returning for.

Enzo & Sons is the work of bar tsar Jamie Webb’s wife, chef Siarah. Her background in his popular nearby venues, Lefty’s Old Time Music Hall and Seymour’s Cocktails & Oyster, has clearly paid off with her first solo venture.