Category: Italian

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Italian

Paninoteca Hub – Lake Heights NSW Restaurant Review

In what’s probably a vain attempt to undo 30 years of processedmeatmaxxing, I’ve been trying to minimize my intake of processed and red meats overall – an endeavor that’s probably ruined my experience at the Illawara’s famed panini hub – a place that really specializes in sandwiches filled with the worst and best kinds of processed meat.

Instead of some delicious abomination filled with salami and mortadella, I had a cotaletta ($13.50), featuring a chicken schnitzel, lettuce, tomato, cucumber, Swiss cheese, and Russian sauce between some housemade bread.

Not bad, good size comes to mind. The flavours are muted, and a little bit more dressing could have gone a long way, though the light taste of it all did allow the sweetness of the Swiss cheese to shine through. The schnitzel was pleasntly warm, though the bread, though made in-house, was nothing special.The deli is located within a bottle-o, and co-located with an Italian grocery store, so it’s less of a restaurant and more of a place that sells sandwiches, with a park bench outside – adequate seating for a couple of guys, but probably inadequate during a more busy period of time.

Service, in contrast to what some of the other online reviews have said, was instant near closing, with no wait at all – a completely different experience to Inner West darling Raineri’s. It’s probably not a huge amount more time driving down to the Gong and getting a sandwich from Paninoteca Hub, than waiting in line at Five Dock.

Perhaps a more cured meat forward sandwich, preceded by a psyllium husk bolus, is on the menu for next time.

Paninoteca Hub
Shop 1a/20-22 Weringa Ave Lake Heights NSW 2502

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Italian

Wally & Ossies Pizza – Campsie NSW Restaurant Review

I don’t normally go for this style of pizza (prefer Neapolitan) but this Ayers Rock ($26 for a family size, 15 inches) is really not bad – purchased for $2 delivered as part of a once off app promotion.

The base is very thin, as can be seen through the cross-section, which means that the topping to bread ratio is actually very good. The flavour, in keeping with a ham, onion, and egg pizza, is predominantly of salt with a hint of tang from the tomato base. They managed, in a rare display of restraint and skill, to avoid the pie being over-salty.

Overall, and deadnaming the landmark aside, it was a pretty good pizza – though not something I’d go out and get.

Wally & Ossies Pizza
288 Beamish St, Campsie NSW 2194
(02) 9789 4019

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Italian

Pane e Vino Trattoria – Croydon NSW Restaurant Review

Pane e Vino Trattoria was actually not the Croydon pizza restaurant I had intended to visit, something I realised only as we drove past Mario’s Pizzeria. In spite of this, and the tail end of a protracted URTI, we had a pretty good meal.

My partner is on a bit of a health kick and requested the insalata di rucola ($17), a plate of mostly rocket drizzled with vinaigrette and with some walnut , parmesan, and a few pear slices mixed in. She enjoyed it, though I could not appreciate it much apart from the vinegar.

The rustica ($26) was a good pizza. Very tasty, well topped, and with a very crispy and chewy crust – a trait that is surely a class characteristic and not unique to this particular topping offering.

The pistaccio pizza ($27) is somewhat of a house specialty, and much more subdued in flavour compared to the rustica. As this pizza relied on subtlety rather than a combination of highly seasoned meats, I had difficulty really appreciating it at the time of consumption, apart from the creamy textures and excellent base. My partner however really enjoyed this pizza, going so far as to not even pick off the prawns. I hope to try it again in a more sinus-clear state.

Pane e Vino Trattoria
21 The Strand, Croydon NSW 2132

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Bakery Italian

Pasticceria Tamborrino – Five Dock NSW Restaurant Review

We pre-ordered online and subsequently picked up in person a cake from local bakery Tamborrino, taking the opportunity to try a few quick snacks whilst we were there.

The REASON FOR VISIT was this ricotta and pear semifreddo (around $40). Semi-freddo as a concept is not something that we’re particularly familiar with, and we were told to keep this out of the fridge for 3 hours prior to serving. Due to poor planning on our part, we consumed this cake after only 90 minutes at room temperature, by which point it had devolved into extremely soft, almost custard like texture. Being non-Italian and not having had any semi or full freddo before, I wasn’t sure if such a degree of softness was intentional, but it certainly did not help with the cake’s overall overpowering sweetness. Though sacrilegious as it may be, I think this would’ve been much better eaten straight out of the freezer, giving it a bit more structure and muting the sweetness just a little bit.

I should admit that I did enjoy the little gold encrusted cereal balls, which were a bit chewy and a bit crunchy. Despite this, this was one of the few occasions where I actually preferred the backup cake from Savoy, the classic taro cake, that is always present at such events.

Though I didn’t love the main event, I did quite enjoy this ricotta mini cannoli ($~4 or less). We had made a separate trip some months ago to Mezzapica in Leichardt to get their allegedly very good cannoli, but I honestly don’t think Tamborrino’s was any worse – possibly even better. We had been lured to Leichardt on the promise that Mezzapica’s cannoli would be extra crispy due to their piping to order, but to be honest Tamborrino’s cabinet cannoli crisped just fine. Unlike the other things we had from Tamborrino, the cannoli was not too sweet.

The other little snack we had was this pistachio mini bomba ($4) – essentially a donut filled with an absolutely huge amount of pistachio filling. This, much like the cake was also quite sweet. But somehow more enjoyable – perhaps due to its small size.

Pasticceria Tamborrino Five Dock
75 Great N Rd, Five Dock NSW 2046

Categories
Italian

Dom on Burelli – Wollongong NSW Restaurant Review

My partner and I visited the number one rated (by averages) Italian restaurant in Wollongong last night, with an average of 4.9 stars across 60 reviews. Despite this, we were the only customers at Dom on Bruelli during our meal, with a staff to customer ratio of 2:1, which was maintained by the arrival of another couple just as we were leaving.

Seated in one corner of the extremely narrow but long restaurant, we had our choice of two pizzas and nothing else.

The salsiccia pizza ($28) was the less enjoyable of the two – a very mildly flavoured white pizza with a topping of sliced potato, confit garlic, parsley, fennel sausage, and a mixture of cheeses – ricotta, fior di latte, and parmesan.

Though I’m usually not one to complain about food being untasty, I’m afraid I have to in this case. In what I would consider an unusual move, the sausage was sliced rather than presented as caseless clumps on the pizza, and though this in itself didn’t distract from their flavour, their sparseness as well as their generally mild taste did mean that the pizza overall was less tasty. The different cheeses also were minimally salted, with the ricotta disappeared into the molten amalgamation, further adding to this problem. The potato slices were semi-crispy and again minimally seasoned. Perhaps the saving grace of this pizza was the restaurant’s housemade chilli oil, which added a bit of flavour and complexity to both the pizza at large as well as its voluminous crust.

I found the diavola pizza ($28) much more enjoyable, with bold flavours from the San Marzano tomatoes, fermented chilli, sopressa, nduja, and the rare appearance of guindillas, which I’ve not had before on a diavola. The presence of these little pickled chillis was key to adding an interesting zest and freshness to the pizza, cutting through the fatty fior di latte and meats, and making this a special pizza overall.

Thoughts on the structure
The base of this pizza was thin and floppy, meaning that we found that our slices were best eaten folded. Contrastingly, the crusts were voluminous, comprising a large percentage of the overall surface area of the pizza. Whilst my partner heretically discarded her crusts, I dutifully consumed all of mine with the help of chilli oil. But did there need to be so much?

I also just have no idea how they could possibly make money with 2 customers at a time during our 36 minute snapshot visit. Hopefully it got a bit businer for them as the night went on, but I suspect the huge patronage from the Wollongong Thursday night food market takes away from the local restaurants a bit.

Dom on Burelli
1/63 Burelli St, Wollongong NSW 2500