SICILIAN RESTAURANT - PARRAMATTA, SYDNEY

Sicilian Restaurant
292 Church St
Parramatta, Sydney

Sicilian is a deceptively large restaurant in the heart of Parramatta with - not surprisingly - a real Italian feel to it.

Seating around 350 people, it is big but packed with plenty of separate spaces creating intimate areas throughout. They have private dining areas, larger spaces with tables, intimate booths and an outdoor area as well.

Sicilian Restaurant serves a wide variety of good quality Italian food - the full range as well - in very generous quantities from a revamped menu.

They've been here for over 10 years while many other places around them have changed hands repeatedly, so they are obviously doing something right!

As they have built a very impressive wood fired pizza oven it seemed very sensible to try one of their pizzas.

We chose the gamberi - described as prawns with goat’s milk fetta, rocket, semi dried tomatoes and chilli.

This was a lovely pizza! It had a nice thin base, a tasty sauce and plenty of prawns and fetta.

Our next starter was one of the signature starters at Sicilian - arancini balls.

We're fans of arancini balls so we tend to order them fairly regularly when they're available.

These ones arrived nicely crisp on the outside and very tender and packed with flavour on the inside. Each arancini ball came served resting on a bed of tangy aioli.

As a self confessed carnivore the Affettati Misti grabbed me straight away. It's also one of the most popular starters here so that helped the decision process!

It was described as being the chef’s hand picked aged and cured meat platter which also came with Italian condiments.

There was again plenty on the plate and it was all delicious.

Mlady had eaten at Sicilian many years ago and was pleasantly surprised to find her beloved favourite meal still available.

So she again ordered the Pollo al Miele - marinated honey and whole grain mustard chicken
tenderloins, lightly fried till golden brown and served
on a bed of garden salad finished with seeded
mustard mayonnaise. It was huge and she declared it was even better than she remembered!

I was in a seafood mood so the extremely large Misto Mare Platter looked good. It had king prawns, scallops on conchiglias (shells), Morton Bay bugs, battered fish, crunchy chips and the chef’s selection of fresh fruits with homemade
cocktail sauce.

There was plenty here and it was all so nicely cooked and well presented. This platter could almost feed two people as well - it's that big!

A good meal needs some nice drinks to go with it so when we spied the familiar Baileys of Glenrowan Durif on the wine list our choice was made. We've visited the region several times and sampled so many good wines there - so it was nice to be able to choose this one at Sicilian.

Finally, as we were ready to explode, we decided to share dessert. The dessert tasting plate sounded perfect - except we soon discovered it wasn't a sample of four desserts, it was four full desserts!!! It had ricotta cheesecake with salted caramel ice cream, tiramisu, cannoli and finally chocolate souffle with white chocolate ice cream. Wow. We were so full already but just couldn't stop eating these lovely sweet tasty desserts. They were all so great - but the chocolate souffle was the winner just by a nose!

Sicilian Restaurant has a well earned reputation for great quality food. Its a pleasant place with plenty of space, and plenty of different spaces as well. Service was friendly and helpful and the quantities were huge - so bring your appetite! Head Chef Vahe has done a great job here.

Sir and Mlady dined as guests of Platinum Restaurant Group and Sicilian Restaurant. Special thanks to Sicilian Restaurant Manager Fallon Gomesz for arranging our visit. Thanks also to Manrico for looking after us so well on the night.