Bastardo — Restaurant in Sydney

4.5/5

What a lovely restaurant experience!

This is a rare time where the staff outshined the food - which was also incredible (is outshined - in the past tense - even a word?!). The restaurant venue is just beautiful, share tables but well spaced to allow privacy and still feel social with dining neighbours. We had a 545pm reservation and by 6 the restaurant was near full, a testament to its popularity.

Overall the food didn't it disappoint, only two suggestions, slightly firmer pasta and less sauce (swordfish spaghetti special and malfada - the malfada was, from memory, the most incredible tasting pasta dish I can recall having) and secondly reduce the pasta dish sizes. We couldnt help ourselves but have two entrees (squid and eggplant parmigana - both delicious!) and by the time the pastas came my wife had to remind me not to keep eating if I was full! Hahah the cucumber salad is exquisite but we just couldn't manage it all.

To be fair, generosity is to be commended but next time we would do one pasta between two. There is something very satisfying about finishing a meal and not feeling like you've overdone it.

Aside from the slightly overcooked pasta (maybe a personal preference) pasta ", the food is superb.

Highly recommended but be warned, you may want to eat more than you are capable of!

Thanks for a great...

Food - excellent. Everything was fresh and really well made except the tiramisu which was full of cream and frankly awful, really disappointing given the rest of the food was fab. Cocktails were nice but nothing special. Good wine list.

The reason I'm giving it 3 stars is that the staff were constantly reminding you (even though the service was friendly and good, albeit a tad slow to get going) that you were on a time limit. It wasn't even subtle however, asking all the time if your drink or food were done even though the drink was just under half full and the plates still had food and we were clearly eating and not done. It really ruined a good experience.

@bastardo, perhaps you should remind patrons of their time limit only once at the start and maybe give them a 30 mins warning towards the end. You also need to make sure that your staff deliver a dinner that is not rushed within that timeframe or find a different way to run your seatings.

If you want a relaxed dinner that is not rushed and you don't want to be sitting down to dinner at 9pm then this place...

Dinned here on a school night. Was greeted by friendly staff. Started with Octopus special, Kingfish, and fried bread. The combination of the crispy Octopus and soft tender centre was cooked flawlessly. The kingfish was very unique. As of late, I have been eating kingfish with an Asian fusion setting, so perhaps I was waiting for zest, which never came. The fried bread was awesome by itself. We shared two pastas. The Mafalda (blue swimmer crab) & the Paccheri (Prawn & tomatoe). Both pastas were stunning. I wish I could have had more. Additional salt, pepper, parmasen cheese, or chilli flakes weren't needed. Al dente cooked at its finest. The Tiramisu was traditional and presented very nicely. The only flaws were that it was very loud for a school night ,(i could barely here my wife talk), the waiters weren't very attentive to clear our empty dishes and that the friend pizza just above room temp once it hit our table.

Would I come here again? Yes. I would just order pastas and come here on a weekend with a group so we could try multiple...