Restaurant – A Turtle Stranger

Pizza Autentico

One thing that has always made me a little sad in Australia is our lack of all-you-can-eat experiences. One of the great things about places like the UK and the Canada is their all-you-can-eat Indian and sushi respectively. Well finally, all my prayers have been answered and Australia, and in particular, Sydney, has finally started jumping on the all-you-can-eat and drink meal deals. My boyfriend and I have noticed heaps of these deals popping up recently, and when we saw one for $50 all you can eat pizza and pasta and all you can drink wine and beer, we knew we had to try, even if it was on a week night.

Enter Pizza Autentico. I don’t think this is a new deal for Pizza Autentico, because they seemed to have themselves set up well already, maybe it’s finally just something we are hearing about some more.

Pizza Autentico is a tiny little establishment in the heart of Surry Hills. Unless you went looking for it, you probably would never stumble across it. If you’re in a small group, you get put on the communal table on the ground floor, a big slab of granite which can seat probably around 20 people. There is a waitress that walks around with various bowls and plates of pizza and pasta, offering you some with each lap and then you simply say yes I want to try, or no I will skip this one out (you never say no) and they give you some to try. As for the drinks, I was drinking red wine which was brought out to me in a big carafe, and my boyfriend was well stocked with beer the whole night.

The reason I like this deal is that they don’t limit you to just one type of meal in the hopes that you will get bored and stop eating, I don’t think we saw the same meal twice in the whole 2 hours we were there. To be fair, the majority of the meals brought around were pizza but you had a wide range from your classic Margarita to your sausage and potato. You could taste the freshness of the dough and ingredients though, so I wasn’t complaining about all the pizza.

The pastas were the real winners though. I am salivating right now just thinking about their four cheese gnocchi. Eating that gnocchi was like biting into little pillows soaked in cheese. It was certainly rich, which is why a small amount was perfect, but the taste was sensational. My other favourite was a chilli penne, with just the right amount of kick, balanced with a tomato sauce.

Often with all you can eat deals, the staff do their best to make your life difficult, or to slow your orders, which don’t get me wrong, it makes sense, but it is rather annoying as a customer. Not at Pizza Autentico. Here, the staff were friendly, helpful, and making sure you were always topped up with food and drinks. They even come and do the courtesy call to let you know when your time is up.

All in all, I cannot recommend this place enough. I think it is potentially my favourite place in all of Sydney, and my boyfriend and I have made the pledge that all our celebrations and nice dinners will be there from now on. If you live in Sydney this place is an absolute must.

I give Pizza Autentico 5 out of 5 stars, I can’t see how anything could top that!

Shiba’s Restaurant

On the main street of Pyrmont (Harris Street), there is a new Japanese restaurant in town. It has been there for a few months now admittedly, but it is still relatively new. I drive past it a couple of times a week and always think to myself, I should go there, but now finally I got the perfect excuse to go. I was catching up with an old friend from uni and she suggested it and how was I to say no to that?

It’s certainly not a fine dining institute there, in fact with the soft toy Shiba’s scattered throughout the restaurant I would say it’s pretty kitschy. You know it’s not a high class establishment when the wine options are house white, house red and that’s it. I ended up getting an Asahi because the $5 house wine didn’t sell it to me.

There is a very extensive menu, with lots of options to make it a set and add lots of different things. I opted for a Chicken Katsu donburi (on its own) whilst my friend got the Chicken Katsu set with Sashimi and rice. My Donburi was pretty yummy, the sauce was good and the chicken was cooked well, but the amount of rice in it was too much. I couldn’t finish it, and I am not someone who doesn’t finish my meals regularly. Mine also came accompanied with Miso Soup. I normally turn my nose up at Miso soup as the Miso is a very distinct taste which I have not adapted to, but the Miso soup here was the best I had. They had toned down the flavour just a bit, so it was much more palatable.

Overall, it was a satisfactory meal, especially for the prices. I wouldn’t say it was the fanciest establishment, but it was still great. If you’re around Pyrmont and you need a quick and easy dinner, this would be the place to go. I give it 6 out of 10!

Piato Restaurant

This cafe/restaurant is one of Sydney’s best kept secrets. There are a lots of cafes in Sydney and it’s impossible to know them all, but normally a cafe this good would be one of those popular ones that everyone has heard of. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still very busy, but it definitely isn’t one that’s plastered all over social media, and where people head to just because they have seen it in their feeds.

For those Aussies (or even those from overseas), the actor who plays Carbo in Packed to the Rafters (AKA George Houvardas) is the owner of this establishment, and it has strong family vibes, with his brother and what I can only assume is his uncle or Dad, running the shop with him. I have been there twice now for breakfast, after someone who was new to Sydney invited me there as she had stumbled across it on a walk one day. Both times I was there for breakfast, but as the name suggests, this place is a restaurant and serves up Italian food for lunch and dinner. Next time I am heading back I am planning on going for dinner to see if the later meals are just as good.

The popularity of this place means their cafe spreads out down the street. You walk up to grab a table and you get taken to tables and chairs in front of stores two doors down. The service is lovely, over the top helpful, and even though they are popular and busy, they never make any attempts to rush you out of there to free up your table.

The breakfast menu is extensive, with everything from bircher muesli, to the big breakfast, to more unique Mediterranean style dishes. Last time I was there I got the Tomato & Basil scrambled eggs which were fantastic. My only qualm with the food is that the portions are mismatched. I got two huge pieces of sourdough for a moderate size of eggs, and only ended up using one piece of bread. My friend next to me had the opposite, where she had too much avocado for everything else, and had half an avocado left in the end. The food was delicious though, and I would have to go back a couple of times to try everything I was interested in as there were so many good options available.

On top of the food and the service, the other great thing about this place is the vibe it gives. You feel like you could be out having a long, lazy day in the streets of Italy. I don’t know how they have managed to create that vibe, but it is inescapable. Something about it makes you want to spend your entire day there chatting with friends and eating delicious food.

I am now a huge fan of this place, and if I ever had friends or family visiting Sydney and I wanted to take them somewhere, this is where we would go. Without having tried their lunch or dinner menu, it seems hard to rate them fairly but based just on breakfast, this is undoubtedly one of Sydney’s best kept secrets.

I give Piato 4 out of 5 for its breakfast and vibes.

Filicudi- the romantic italian

Valentines Day, the infamous day that sends boyfriends and husbands scurrying to the florists, and single people trying to fill their time with anything to prove that they are ok with being alone. It’s a night love by some, and hated by a lot more. Now, I have to admit, I went out for dinner on Valentines Day, but not for the reason that everyone would expect.

My boyfriend and I have been dating for 6 months now, and so this would be our first Valentines Day. He warned me early, he was not a Valentines Day fan, and since I am not that fussed on over the top romantic gestures, we decided we would skip it, and not celebrate it. The difficulty is, his birthday falls on the 15th of February, and because of the kind-hearted person he is, my boyfriend was spending his birthday doing a charity climb to help a child with Cerebral Palsy and his family climb Mt Kosciuszko on this day so we couldn’t celebrate together on the day, so our only option was to celebrate the night before on Valentines Day.

I must admit that part of me kind of hoped my boyfriend would suprise me, but he is a man of his word and there was no suprise. On thinking about it all though, a nice dinner is all I need. Anyway, we did indeed go for a very lovely dinner at a nice little authentic italian restaurant in Five Dock called Filicudi. The place catches your heart from the moment you step into the cosy little restaurant, with empty bottles hanging from the roof (a bit of a hazard for those tall ones like my boyfriend), the walls covered with newspaper clippings and eclectic paintings and artworks, and cosy little tables of two everywhere.

It was recommended to us, and so we were looking forward to checking it out. We booked a few weeks in advance, luckily, because it was packed and people were rolling in and out all night, some even getting turned away at the door. The only drawback of this setup, was we had a couple sitting right next to us, only about 40cm away. This wouldn’t normally be so bad but this couple was probably on their 2nd ever date, and I don’t think they were quite yet 18 so their conversation as Annoying. As. Hell. I am sure on any other night this wouldn’t be a problem, but listening to these young guys call Calvin Harris the best musician of our lifetime really didn’t set the scene well.

Luckily, I realised that cocktails were so cheap, so before long I was sipping on a $12 Aperol Spritz. We decided what we wanted pretty quickly; pasta for me, pizza for my bf, and some garlic bread as well. Carbs on carbs. I went for the Diavola pasta; penne with mushroom, chilli and a creamy tomato sauce. My bf went for the classic Meatlovers pizza.

We had barely ordered before our garlic bread was out. As far as garlic bread goes, it was pretty good but it was a little too soggy in places, and a little too oily. Certainly not the best I have ever had, but pretty good nonetheless. It was at this point that my bf realised that the back kitchen in charge of everything that wasn’t pizza was literally being run by Nonnas (the pizza oven was in the front run being run by some middle age men). The Nonnas were dishing up the pastas, breads and mains. You know it’s an authentic meal then.

It wasn’t long at all before our mains were out as well. Now, my pasta sounded pretty basic but the taste of it was anything but basic. The kick of the chilli is the first thing that grabs you, but before long the smoothness of the homemade penne catches up. It was delicious, and my whole plate was gobbled down in a minute. I have never enjoyed pasta quite this much, and whilst I put a sprinkling of parmesan on it, it didn’t even need it. The pasta stood up on its own. I nearly had to lick my bowl clean at the end, the sauce was so good.

I also got to taste a little bit of my boyfriends pizza, and I am not normally a meatlovers pizza fan, but this pizza was delicious. The base was solid and tasty, but didn’t have a strong enough flavour to drown out the actual toppings of the pizza. The tomato sauce was garlicky and full of flavour, and the meat added even more taste explosions to your mouth. It wasn’t long before the pizza had disappeared too.

So over the course of the dinner, we had a large pizza, a main size pasta, garlic bread, a cocktail, and two beers. Now we were expecting a pretty decent bill to come out, but were shocked when the bill was just $80. Yes, $80 for the best authentic Italian I have had outside of Italy including drinks. The bill was even accompanied by a love heart shaped chocolate. It was a little touch but it rounded out the night perfectly.

We decided on leaving that this was going to become our go to place whenever we had something big to celebrate. It was an intimate enough setting that had good atmosphere, great service and delicious and authentic food. I would 100% recommend everyone to check it out, even if it is in the obscure neighbourhood of Five Dock.

I give Filicudi 5 out of 5.