I love pasta! It’s one of the few things I love eating out as much as I love cooking at home. And the best pasta dishes in Sydney follow the same rules.
Don’t overcook it (dried pasta should be al dente and fresh should be tender with a little ‘bite’), serve it fresh (never pre-cooked) and keep the sauce simple (maximum 3 or 4 ingredients). Particular shapes work best with specific sauces, so avoid anywhere that offers a mix-and-match selection of shapes and sauces. See the video below to learn how to cook pasta like a Nonna. Here are the the best pasta dishes I had in Sydney in 2016 – with honourable mention to Mitch Orr’s strozzapretti with kale at the much missed ACME (pictured).
Culurzones Pilu at Freshwater
Culurzones are a distinctive Sardinian ravioli that always appears on Giovanni Pilu’s menu in one form or another. At their most classic they’re filled with potato and mint and served with a simple tomato sauce. Giovanni sometimes mixes up the filling (my favourite were with baccala), but they always have that traditional plaited shape – like an ear of wheat – that takes years to perfect!
Cacio e Pepe Buffalo Dining Club
Cacio e Pepe is the quintessential simple pasta dish (to add anything more would be a crime): hot spaghetti, black pepper and parsley, tossed in the hollow of a wheel of Pecorino Romano cheese. It picks up all that cheesy flavour – and I love the theatre of it too!
Truffled Egg Fettuccine Buon Ricordo
No list of Sydney pasta dishes can be complete without the creamy fettuccine topped with a fried truffle-scented egg created by Armando Percuoco. Today, under new owner David Wright, it’s still deftly tossed together tableside with freshly grated parmesan, by a white-coated waiter. It’s still as rich too, but you won’t regret it!
Spaghetti, Burrata & Colatura di Alici Maybe Frank
This cool Randwick pizzeria and bar also has a short pasta menu. And, in 2016 when they were still in Darlinghurst, I had a punchy spaghetti there with creamy burrata, colatura di alici (anchovy fish sauce modelled on Ancient Roman garum), confit tomatoes and fried breadcrumbs that I’ve never forgotten! It wasn’t pretty – but it was irresistibly good!
Black Handkerchief Pasta with Seafood & Chilli Lucio’s Italian Restaurant – CLOSED
Lucio’s fresh pasta was the finest and smoothest I ever tasted, and always with perfect texture. His fazzoletti neri ai frutti di mare, jet-black irregular strips of pasta tossed with chunks of prawn and cuttlefish (they left the mussels out for me) with a touch of garlic, chilli and chervil, is still one of my benchmark pasta dishes!
Published 18 Mar 2017
