Open 7 nights & Friday Lunch
02 9560 9129
159 Norton Street Leichdart
www.elio.com.au
Leichhardt, the best known Italian food district in sydney was our destination tonight. We found this busy little restaurant on Norton Street down towards the city west link side. In our humble opinion, a busy restaurant usually means it's a good restaurant.
Looking through the glass front from the street, the decor seemed modern and simple. We walked inside and were greeted immediately by no one. We waited by the door for about 5 minutes before anyone came to show us to our table.
The menu was in Italian. We had no idea what a Primi Piatti was, so we ended up choosing two mains. These of course were the Linguine Alle Vongole Zucchini e Prezzemolo and the Cavatelli Con Pesce Spada Mandorle Broccolini e Menta. Translation: Linguine with Tasmanian baby clams and zucchini in a white wine, chilli and garlic sauce & Cavatelli with swordfish toasted almond, fresh mint, cherry tomato and broccoli.
When asked what drinks we would like, we asked our friendly waiter to choose the wine that best complimented our meal. A moment later, he came back with two glasses of Fazio Insolia a white italian wine that goes well with seafood.
The wine was a refreshing dry white wine, very easy to drink even for a beginner like Betty.
Our food came out quite promptly despite the full house, which was quite impressive. The pasta was slightly undercooked although after letting it sit there for a while, it became palatable. The sauce in the clam pasta was quite bland at first and the clam shells got in the way of eating the linguine. After completely demolishing the clams, the linguine was a lot easier to eat now that I could wrap the linguine around my fork without the clam shells getting in the way. This made the flavour of the dish more noticeable. Overall, this could have been a good pasta if there weren't so many clam shells.
Betty
The same applied to my pasta, at first I thought the shells were undercooked, but after a bit of time I didn't mind it as much I think they softened in the sauce. My heart skipped a beat when I thought the cubes of cottage cheese - was chicken..!! But then quickly realised it was swordfish haha... I really really liked the almond flakes, only because I like almonds, but the texture of the almond flakes didn't mesh well with the rest of the dish. I actually wanted a creamy pasta tonight, but there was nothing creamy that was made with seafood.
I liked my dish a lot, Rick liked mine more than his! Which is always the case anyway :) The portion size was just right for me, although Rick was still feeling peckish afterwards, so we requested the dessert menu.
We decided on the Belgian chocolate budino with almond milk granatina, & Rick wanted to try the raspberry grappa (Grappa is a fermented grape skin spirit, which is 40-50 proof)
Like our mains the desserts came out quickly, we were very impressed. The chocolate budina had a thick & creamy texture much like a chocolate mousse. The flavour of the dark chocolate was slightly overpowering which we didn't mind since we're big fans of dark chocolate. We didn't really like the almond milk granatina (comparable to a sorbet), as the textures were just too different. The budina was warm and the granatina was cold. This didn't go well as the budina started to melt the granatina.
The grappa smelt very much like a sweet raspberry, but the taste however was nothing like the smell. Think of smelling a nice scented oil and then having a drink out of the burner bowl - nice smelling but tastes disgusting and foul. Rick drank it all though, waste not want not.
Overall, I greatly enjoyed the dining experience. But, wouldn't ever come back there again. The reason for this is simple. I want to try all the restaurants on Norton street before coming back for seconds.
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