This listing is from 2022, profiles will be updated after the Restaurant of the Year event in mid-October.

If there’s anywhere on this list we feel like we could eat at again and again and again, it’s Pici. Why? Because it’s casual, it’s fast, it’s tasty, it’s fun, and nothing is over $22-ish.
Opened in the last year by Jonathan Thevenard, Gemma Hareb and Kaz Suzuki, there’s an immense energy at this small St Kevins restaurant — its effortless warm vibe, impossible to manufacture, spills over into the arcade. It’s always hectic and stuffed right to the edges, with a little mezzanine up top and seating at the bar, so bookings are very much recommended.
Keeping in theme with its small space, there’s only a maximum of five or six things under each menu division of antipasti, pasta and dessert, including easily ripped-apart focaccia, a bracing bitter-leaves salad, and its namesake dish, the pici cacio e pepe. The pici is the only thing on the menu hand-rolled (other pasta shapes are extruded daily). It’s then doused in a hot, indulgent cheese sauce that’s spiked with heaps of pepper, right up to the point where it can accurately be described as “spicy”.
After everything, stick your spoon into the Pici cheesecake, which is a memorable hunk of citrusy cream cheese drizzled with olive oil and sea salt.