Sicilian Modern Italian & Woodfire Pizzas - Parramatta

Hello everyone!

Today I'll be reviewing about my dining experience at Sicilian Modern Italian & Woodfire Pizzas.

Sicilian an Italian restaurant that specializes in woodfire pizzas and modern Italian cuisines, and is located in Parramatta.

What caught my attention to try them was the size of their restaurant, and the people that were sitting outside feasting on their woodfire pizzas.


When we went inside, the waiter seated us at a couples seat, with a candle on the table.

The restaurant was very dark, and I guess it does give a more romantic feel to it.


The first thing we ordered were 2 Lemon Lime Bitters $4.90

Then came our entree, half dozen of fresh oysters Kilpatrick, with diced bacon and Worcestershire sauce. $16.90. The oysters tasted really fresh, and I really enjoyed the texture of the raw oyster served with diced bacon and the sauce. Honestly, I do not enjoy eating oysters raw, or cooked, but this one managed to satisfy me, I really liked it.

We also ordered a Fettucini Geraldo $24.90, which was marinated prawns and chicken with garlic, tomato and shallots served in a creamy avocado and white wine sauce. We decided to order a pasta just in case we're not full enough, also the description of this pasta was very temping to try. The sauce was creamy, the avocado and the garlic prawns were surprisingly a good combination. Absolutely delicious!

And lastly, our woodfire pizza, which we ordered the Tropicale $19.90. Tropicale is actually the Hawaiian pizza, except the ones they make at Sicilian, are whole a new level. What I liked about the Tropicale was it's roma tomates and parsley on top that gave the whole pizza a taste of Italy. The ham was not diced but was in thin slices, the pineapple was super sweet too. The crust was cooked perfectly, not too thin but not too thick to the point where it was hard to chew.

I had a wonderful time dining at Sicilian. The dining atmosphere was very pleasant, with nice tentative waiters, delicious food, and average prices for good Italian dining.


Overall I would give them 8.5 out of 10.


They're one of my favourite Italian restaurants so far, and I also went there again for lunch.

They have a special lunch menu, their woodfire pizzas only cost $14.90 and comes with complimentary drink of your choice.


So if you ever drop by Parramatta, be sure to try Sicilian.

Thanks for reading!


-Kumi.

Tingha Palace - Parramatta

Address: Parramatta Leagues Club / 13-15 O'Connell St Parramatta NSW 2150
Phone: (02) 9890 1688

So today for lunch, we decided to go to visit the Chinese Restaurant at Parramatta Leagues Club for some 'Yum Cha' direct translation 'drink tea' in Cantonese. The location is very nice, ambience all very well done as expected inside a Leagues Club and the whole design of the restaurant was very authentic 'Chinese'. Upon entrance, we were greeted and taken to our table. As per all Yum Cha places, they ask you what tea you want to drink. We chose Jasmine Tea.

I was very disappointed with the tea they gave us, it was the bottom of the packet all crushed up and loose. So whenever we poured tea or tried to drink tea, we'd be drinking the tea leaves. Taste wasn't too bad but honestly, the bottom of the packet of the tea should be separated and disposed of.

Anyways, we ordered a total of 6 dishes

From top down, left to right we have Chicken Feet, Prawn Dumplings, BBQ Pork Pastry (Char Siu Sou), Pan-Fried Dumplings (Guo Tie), Rice Noodle Rolls and Steamed Glutinous Rice.

Chicken Feet was very unique, brought a little SiChuan into a Canton Black Bean Style Chicken Feet.

The Prawn Dumplings also not bad, not the best available in Australia but I haven't ordered this dish in a while due to many locations ability to fail the most common ordered dish in Yum Cha and they didn't do too bad here.

The BBQ Pork Pastry was very crunchy, but I felt the BBQ Pork inside the pastry didn't do its job, it was very dry and lacked moisture inside. And the pastry was just crunchy, it wasn't 'Sou' enough. Wasn't too bad of a dish though.

The Pan-Fried dumplings here were pretty yummy, they looked a bit dodgy at first, I was wondering why the grey skin, but ended up tasting pretty nice. The skin wasn't too thick, nor to thin, the pork mixture inside was very nice and had a nice soup taste in it. Very well done on this one.

Then the Rice Noodle Rolls, they were cooked fresh in front of your face, there is a trolley pushing them around and when you order it, the lady cooks it and fries it for you on her trolley in your vision. Was cooked very nicely and very fresh when placed on the table. Crunchy, smooth yet also thin and not too much oil. A very nice dish well done here.

Lastly was the Glutinous Rice, it was very disappointing. The flavour was awful and bitter (too much leaf flavour), the rice was too dry (not glutinous at all) and they didn't have many side dishes wrapped inside of the rice (not even Salty Duck Egg... which normally comes in all of them).

Overall, I would give this dining experience a rating of 6.5/10.

Food wasn't too bad, much better then many Yum Cha destinations out there, but it definitely wasn't the best.

-Samuel.

Shanghai Chef Kitchen - Parramatta

Today, I went to a restaurant nearby for dinner. Ambience, very casual, nothing special to see here but an obvious local favourite as this place is packed for lunch with daily lunch specials from $7.80.

Most Shanghai restaurants provide the 'Shanghai style' meals and at the same time also have the casual 'Canton style' dining (so the mongolian lamb, sweet n sour pork etc.)

At Shanghai Chef Kitchen, this does not differ and so on my visit I went for a 'Shanghai style' dinner. It was pretty quiet today, and so we quickly made our orders.

This was the first dish to arrive on our table, Hot n Sour soup. For $4.80, this is probably one of the best Hot n Sour soups you will get. There is a larger size for $8.80 but we settled at the small size.

Quickly after, came the 'Shanghai Fried Noodles'. As I said, it was a pretty quiet night for them so all the food practically came in 15 minutes, most the 15 minutes probably the time needed to steam the buns.

The noodles were great. Elasticity of the noodles was very good yet easy to bite through, little bit of pork meat with a relative amount of light and dark soy sauce gave it great taste and texture. The greens were a nice extra, one of my personal favourites.

This is the 'Seaweed Short Soup'. For those that know short soup, that normally uses a chicken broth, but this one has its own special soup base with Seaweed. Unlike the original short soups chicken-broth based soup, this ones lightly flavoured yet very diverse, one of the restaurants specialties.

Some Pork Ear... and many many dumplings!

The soup buns, 'xiao long bao' little dragon buns translated in english were very well made here. Good xiaolongbao's are defined by thin pastry, great tasting soup and pork mince. It is very easy to oversteam the buns, even one or two minutes extra can cause the pastry to pop or stick to the bottom, thus controlling the timing of steaming these buns is very important. The xiao long bao's here were perfectly steamed, and met all the requirements of good soup buns. I personally think they have some of the best xiao long bao's around Sydney.

Last was the pan-fried dumplings. These weren't bad, the meat inside was very nice and the soup squirted when I bit the pastry but I personally thought the pastry was too thick and the meat was too little.

All in all it was a pretty nice casual dinner and I would come back for some more.

My Rating: 7.5/10

-Samuel.