Cibo e Vino

Friendly service. But the food and deserts are tasteless and poorly presented. No pepper or salt on the tables.

I haven’t been to Cibo e Vino for a while. Last Saturday I went to the movies, the movie was screened at 6.15 so no chance of dinner beforehand. Afterwards we wandered out to the Piazza in Castle Hill and discovered it to be heaving with crowds of people and eating there was going to be impossible.
I suggested Cibo e Vino, I thought as they were a little bit of a way from the Piazza they would be quiet and we would get a table. It took us all of two minutes to walk across the road and own the street. It’s strange when you become use to simply taking the easy way out and accepting mediocre food just because it is closer.
We found the restaurant was very busy, we secured the last table. It was different from last time I visited it. It had been painted and there was a cosy feel to it, it had found some of the ambience that it had always been missing.
The menu was different as well. Short and sharp, much easier to make up your mind. But there was still plenty of choices, several pasta dishes and a range of meat and fish. The choices were similar but definitely different.
I asked the waiter had the restaurant change hands, the changes were so obvious. It had last September, wow, it didn’t seem that long since I had been.
We ordered our meal and a great wine and throughly enjoyed ourselves. The wait staff were extremely friendly and the meal turned out to be the highlight of the evening.
I had the seafood pasta, a simple dish which is hard to get wrong but this was exceptional. Medium sized prawns and mussels along with sweet small rings of calamari in a delicious sauce which had a slight zing from the chilli that had been used with a light hand so you could tell it was there but it was an enhancement not a show of bravado.
I have gone off desserts recently but the others had one so I joined in, a lovely semifreddo with a wonderful praline and sweetened poached pears on the side it was presented well and left me wanting more.
The chef ‘Hans’ came out to talk to us as I had told the waiter that his seafood sauce for the pasta was sublime. We had quite a conversation about food, he is definitely talented and I hope they manage to keep hold of him.
We left the restaurant satisfied but not uncomfortable feeling that we may have made a marvellous rediscovery just moments away from the heart of Castle Hill.