Salt Meats Cheese
Level 2/1 Macquarie Place
Circular Quay, Sydney
Salt Meats Cheese has quite a growing empire - but then good Italian food is as popular as ever in Sydney so it's no surprise really. They have some good locations too, and this restaurant right in Circular Quay is a prime location, as evidenced by the crowd there.
We started with a couple of glasses of red, unsurprising again really, and some arancini - an Italian favourite of ours. These were described as saffron and fontina (a cows milk cheese from Italy), aioli and Parmesan. A serving of six golden treats arrived, looking, smelling and tasting great. Scraping them through the aioli and Parmesan was impossible to resist. We were off to a good start.
We'd decided to share two mains, a pizza and a pasta dish, to have some variety. Feeling in a bit of a seafood mood we chose the pescatora - which came topped with tomato, fior di latte, plenty of prawns, cherry tomatoes, zucchini slices, basil and chilli oil. It was hot, hearty, colourful and full of plenty of flavour.
Our pasta dish was the mouthful of a name - paccheri all' Amatriciana. This was a hearty pasta dish with large tubular paccheri pasta and a great mix of pancetta, crushed tomatoes, garlic, parsley and topped with pecorino romano cheese. On a cold night like the one we were having, this was the perfect type of dish. It had great flavours too.
Salt Meats Cheese had a big crowd when we visited, but it was a Friday evening. Nevertheless, food flowed promptly and the service was friendly and efficient. There was a buzz in the place and the sounds of people enjoying the end of the week, the smell and taste of good food and a few drinks of course.