Spaghetti All' Arrabbiata by Sebastian Mary (Flickr)
When a person is looking for a great Italian feed, Leichhardt usually springs to mind. Norton Street is renowned throughout Sydney as a premier location for all your Italian needs. However, often the restaurants are overpriced, packed with tourists and are disappointing.
Are there other, less crowded and kitschy locations around? Absolutely. Unlike it's over-hyped neighbour, the quiet suburb of Haberfield is home to some of the best Italian restaurants, delicatessens and pasticcerie in Sydney.
Just the next suburb along from Leichhardt, Haberfield is a cosy example of elegant green suburbia. The major crossroad of Dalhousie St and Ramsay St are the convergence of many wonderful flavours.
Prominent on the corner is
Pasticceria Papa a large, friendly and reasonably priced Italian bakery. The food is nice and the coffee is better. However if you are looking for the best, look no further than A & P Sulfaro Pasticceria Italiana. While the staff are surly and unhelpful, this little pasticceria (just a few metres down the road from Papa's), has some of the most glorious Italian baked goods outside of the mother country. While largely unknown outside of its regular patrons and locals, some of these patrons will make the pilgrimage all the way from the eastern suburbs to dine upon the delectable treats that await you at Sulfaro's.
If it is pasta and pizza you desire, then look no further. Within literal spitting distance are half a dozen Italian restaurants that will fit the bill. Of course, if you are looking for Italian cuisine that is more varied than your classic pasta, pizza combo, then that can be remedied as well.
There is
Dolcissimo, Napoli in Bocca, or Il Goloso in the refurbished old post office, just to name a few. All of these restaurants will cater to a variety of tastes and dietary requirements. The prices and quality does vary somewhat, but in a suburb of well to do suburbanites with a taste for the good things in life, the suburb almost polices itself. A restaurant cannot be bad and stay there for long.
Haberfield has an atmosphere that is slowly leaching away from many of the restaurants of the world these days. There is an authenticity that cannot be feigned. This is a suburb that was and still is honestly populated by Italians, and it shows. Come and enjoy a feed down there, you will not be disappointed.
